The Response of Aspen \u3ci\u3e(Populus Tremuloides)\u3c/i\u3e to Artificial Defoliation

(excerpt) In the summers of 1939 and 1940 hand defoliation oftrembling aspen, Populus tremuloides Michx., was carried on in a young stand located a few miles north of Itasca State Park. This study was undertaken to determine the response of aspen trees to several amounts of defoliation at four different times during the summer. Other similar artificial defoliation studies have been reported by Wallace (1945), Giese et al. (1964), Skilling (1964), Kulman (197 I), and Heichel and Turner (1976)

Role of Insects and Diseases in a Jack Pine Provenance Study

Two jack pine plantations were established at the Cloquet Forestry Center, Cloquet, Minnesota, in 1942 and 1943, using trees originating from 22 sites in the United States and 10 in Canada. From 1945 to 1953 the incidence of attack by insects and diseases was recorded individually for all trees, and in 1980-1981 the diameter and form of both living and dead trees were recorded. There were differences in the incidence of attack by the pests and in tree response to early injury among the various seed sources. In 1980 and in 1981 there were differences in tree form resulting from insect and both living and dead pest-free trees had the best form. The diameter increases from 1955 to 1980-1981 were almost identical for all categories with the exception of the dead pest-free trees which had the smallest diameters

Particle distributions in approximately 10(14) 10(16) eV air shower cores at sea level

Experimental evidence is reported for fixed distances (0, 1.0, 2.5 and 4.0 m) from the shower centers and for core flattening. The cores become flatter, on average, as the shower size (primary energy) increases. With improved statistics on 4192 cores, the previous results are exactly confirmed

Prisms of the abstract : Material relations in Icelandic art

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: Early research on this topic was funded by an AHRC studentship award. The writing of this article was supported by the European Research Council, as part of the project ‘Knowing from the Inside’ at the University of Aberdeen (2013–2018).Peer reviewedPostprin

I Like To Meet People

I like to meet people of all kinds - old or young, famous or unknown, well-educated or illiterate, brilliant or stupid, good or bad, Negro or Chinese, foreign or American. They are all needed to make up this world in which we live, so why not get to know them? One can enjoy living much better if he knows those with whom he associates. There are so many interesting people to meet that I know I shall never tire of meeting them

Triple mode Cepheid masses

Unconventional composition structures are proposed to explain the periods of the triple mode Cepheid aC And. A strong Cepheid wind appears to enrich helium in the convection zones down to about 60,000 K or 70,000 K. Then some downward partial mixing occurs to the bottom of a layer with about 1-q = .0005 of the stellar mass. It was found that AC And was not unlike anomalous Cepheids. However, masses of betwen one and two solar masses are suggested and the population is more likely a type two

A Low Cost Remote Sensing System Using PC and Stereo Equipment

A system using a personal computer, speaker, and a microphone is used to detect objects, and make crude measurements using a carrier modulated by a pseudorandom noise (PN) code. This system can be constructed using a personal computer and audio equipment commonly found in the laboratory or at home, or more sophisticated equipment that can be purchased at reasonable cost. We demonstrate its value as an instructional tool for teaching concepts of remote sensing and digital signal processing.Comment: Accepted for publication in American Journal of Physic

Certifying and removing disparate impact

What does it mean for an algorithm to be biased? In U.S. law, unintentional bias is encoded via disparate impact, which occurs when a selection process has widely different outcomes for different groups, even as it appears to be neutral. This legal determination hinges on a definition of a protected class (ethnicity, gender, religious practice) and an explicit description of the process. When the process is implemented using computers, determining disparate impact (and hence bias) is harder. It might not be possible to disclose the process. In addition, even if the process is open, it might be hard to elucidate in a legal setting how the algorithm makes its decisions. Instead of requiring access to the algorithm, we propose making inferences based on the data the algorithm uses. We make four contributions to this problem. First, we link the legal notion of disparate impact to a measure of classification accuracy that while known, has received relatively little attention. Second, we propose a test for disparate impact based on analyzing the information leakage of the protected class from the other data attributes. Third, we describe methods by which data might be made unbiased. Finally, we present empirical evidence supporting the effectiveness of our test for disparate impact and our approach for both masking bias and preserving relevant information in the data. Interestingly, our approach resembles some actual selection practices that have recently received legal scrutiny.Comment: Extended version of paper accepted at 2015 ACM SIGKDD Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Minin

Progress report on a new search for free e/3 quarks in the cores of 10(15) - 10(16) eV air showers

The Leeds 3 sq m Wilson cloud chamber is being used in a new search for free e/3 quarks close to the axes of 10 to the 15th power - 10 to the 16th power eV air showers. A ratio trigger circuit is used to detect the incidence of air shower cores; the position of the shower center and the axis direction are determined from photographs of current-limited spark chambers. It is thus possible, for the first time, to know where we have looked for quarks in air showers and to select for scanning only those cloud chamber photographs where we have good evidence that the shower axis was close to the chamber. 250 g/sq cm of lead/concrete absorber above the cloud chamber serve to reduce particle densities and make a quark search possible very close to the shower axes. The current status of the search is given

Everybody Knows: Engaged Research and the Changing Role of the Academic

The rise of the impact and engagement agendas has challenged the role of the academic, and particularly the relationship between the academic, knowledge and the wider public. In this article, we propose that, alongside the existing models of ‘knowledge transfer’ and ‘knowledge exchange’, academic engagement with external audiences can also be conceptualised as a multidimensional ‘knowledge network’. We adopt a case study approach to explore and illustrate what such a knowledge network looks like in practice, and we consider the implications of thinking about university engagement activities in these terms, with particular emphasis on what it means for the shifting role of the academic