Application of Spatial Modeling Tools to Predict Native Bee Abundance in Maine\u27s Lowbush Blueberries

Non-native honeybees historically have been used to pollinate many crops throughout the United States, however, recent population declines have revealed the need for a more sustainable pollination plan. Native bees are a natural resource that can play an important role in pollination. I used spatial modeling tools to evaluate relationships between landscape factors and native bee abundance, with a focus on the wild native bees that pollinate Maine’s lowbush blueberries. I applied the InVEST Crop Pollination ecosystem spatial modeling tool, which predicts pollinator abundance based on available floral resources and nesting habitat, to the Downeast Maine region. The InVEST model is a generic tool that can be adapted to any landscape with development of location specific parameters and a validation dataset. I surveyed botanists, entomologists and ecologists who are experts in native bee ecology and familiar with Maine’s landscape, and asked them to rank the suitability of landcover types as native bee habitat. I used previously collected bee abundance data to validate model assumptions. I evaluated the sensitivity and explanatory power of the InVEST model with four model parameterization methods: 1) suitability values assigned through the expert survey; 2) suitability values developed through a sensitivity analysis; 3) informed suitability values developed through an optimization based on the sensitivity analysis; and, 4) uninformed suitability values developed through machine-learning simulated annealing optimization. I evaluated the improvement in prediction gained from expert-informed and optimization-informed parameterization compared with prediction based on the relationship between proportion of landcover surrounding blueberry fields and native bee abundance as an alternative to the InVEST model. The InVEST model parameterized through expert opinion predicted native been abundance (r = 0.315; P = 0.047), whereas, the uninformed optimization improved model performance by 28% (r = 0.404; P = 0.010), and the informed optimization technique improved model performance by 58% (r = 0.486; P = 0.002). The landcover analysis found a significant relationship between the proportion of deciduous/mixed forest within a 2000 meter buffer around a field and native bee abundance within the field (r = 0.446; P = 0.004). Although the InVEST model reliably predicts bee abundance across a landscape, simpler models quantifying relationships between bee abundance and proportional land cover around focal fields may be suitable alternatives to the InVEST simulation model

Letter from Mrs. W. J. Chapin to Senator Langer Regarding US House Joint Resolution 33 and US Senate Joint Resolution 11, July 18, 1949

This letter dated July 18, 1949, from Mrs. W. J. Chapin of Hankinson, North Dakota to United States (US) Senator William Langer, explains that Mrs. Chapin has been asked by Reverend H. W. Case of the Fort Berthold Mission to write to Langer regarding US House of Representatives Joint Resolution 33 and US Senate Joint Resolution 11, hoping Langer will vote for them. Chapin explains she is president of the congregation\u27s Ladies Aid and that the members were asked by Case to to what they could to help support the mission at Elbowoods. See also: Letter from Senator Langer to Mrs. W. J. Chapin Regarding US House Joint Resolution 33 and US Senate Joint Resolution 11, August 8, 1949 Hearings before the Subcommittee on Indian Affairs of the Committee on Public Lands House of Representatives Eighty-First Congress First Session on H.J. Res. 33 Providing for the Ratification by Congress of the Contract to Purchase Indian Lands by the United States from the Three Affiliated Tribes of Fort Berthold, North Dakota An Act to Vest Title to Certain Lands of the Three Affiliated Tribes of the Fort Berthold Reservation, North Dakota, in the United States, and to Provide Compensation Thereforhttps://commons.und.edu/langer-papers/1948/thumbnail.jp

ARBAC Policy for a Large Multi-National Bank

Administrative role-based access control (ARBAC) is the first comprehensive administrative model proposed for role-based access control (RBAC). ARBAC has several features for designing highly expressive policies, but current work has not highlighted the utility of these expressive policies. In this report, we present a case study of designing an ARBAC policy for a bank comprising 18 branches. Using this case study we provide an assessment about the features of ARBAC that are likely to be used in realistic policies

Beyond the End of the Beginning

The chapters in this volume contain detailed analyses of election reform politics in eleven states from 2001 to 2003. Over this three-year period, the states and Congress passed legislation that was designed to address the many serious problems with election administration that came to light during the 2000 presidential election. Each of the case studies revealed important insights about how the individual states responded to the 2000 presidential election and the requirements and incentives of the HAVA. The common framework of nine key factors for analyzing reform politics enables us to compare the results of the individual studies and determine the extent to which each of the factors helps to account for the three major types of outcomes: leading major reform states, incremental change states, and late-developing reform states. Taken together, the findings provide the raw materials for developing general conclusions about policy adoption in the area of election law, and insights into the future of election reform

BLAST Autonomous Daytime Star Cameras

We have developed two redundant daytime star cameras to provide the fine pointing solution for the balloon-borne submillimeter telescope, BLAST. The cameras are capable of providing a reconstructed pointing solution with an absolute accuracy < 5 arcseconds. They are sensitive to stars down to magnitudes ~ 9 in daytime float conditions. Each camera combines a 1 megapixel CCD with a 200 mm f/2 lens to image a 2 degree x 2.5 degree field of the sky. The instruments are autonomous. An internal computer controls the temperature, adjusts the focus, and determines a real-time pointing solution at 1 Hz. The mechanical details and flight performance of these instruments are presented.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figures, 1 table. To be published in conference proceedings for the "Ground-based and Airborne Instrumentation for Astronomy" part of the SPIE Astronomical Telescopes and Instrumentation Symposium that will be held 24-31 May 2006 in Orlando, F

Strong (X)HTML Compliance with Haskell\u27s Flexible Type System

We report on the embedding of a domain specific language, (X)HTML, into Haskell and demonstrate how this superficial non-context-free language can be represented and rendered to guarantee World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) compliance. Compliance of web content is important for the health of the Internet, accessibility, visibility, and reliable search. While tools exist to verify web content is compliant according to the W3C, few systems guarantee that all produced content is compliant. We present CH-(X)HTML, a library for generating compliant (X)HTML content by using Haskell to encode the nontrivial syntax of (X)HTML set forth by the W3C. Any compliant document can be represented with this library, while a compilation error will occur if non-compliant markup is attempted. To demonstrate our library we present examples and performance measurements

Exploring non-typical memcache architectures for decreased latency and distributed network usage.

Memcache is a distributed in-memory data store designed to reduce database load for web applications by caching frequently used data across multiple machines. While memcache already offers excellent performance, we explore how data-locality can increase performance under certain environments and workloads

Ethylene regulates phosphorus remobilization and expression of a phosphate transporter (PhPT1) during petunia corolla senescence

The programmed degradation of macromolecules during petal senescence allows the plant to remobilize nutrients from dying to developing tissues. Ethylene is involved in regulating the timing of nucleic acid degradation in petunia, but it is not clear if ethylene has a role in the remobilization of phosphorus during petal senescence. To investigate ethylene's role in nutrient remobilization, the P content of petals (collectively called the corolla) during early development and senescence was compared in ethylene-sensitive wild type Petunia×hybrida ‘Mitchell Diploid’ (MD) and transgenic petunias with reduced sensitivity to ethylene (35S::etr1-1). When compared to the total P content of corollas on the day of flower opening (the early non-senescing stage), P in MD corollas had decreased 74% by the late stage of senescence (advanced wilting). By contrast, P levels were only reduced by an average of 32% during etr1-1 corolla (lines 44568 and Z00-35-10) senescence. A high-affinity phosphate transporter, PhPT1 (PhPht1;1), was cloned from senescing petunia corollas by RT-PCR. PhPT1 expression was up-regulated during MD corolla senescence and a much smaller increase was detected during the senescence of etr1-1 petunia corollas. PhPT1 mRNA levels showed a rapid increase in detached corollas (treated at 1 d after flower opening) following treatment with low levels of ethylene (0.1 μl l-1). Transcripts accumulated in the presence of the protein synthesis inhibitor, cycloheximide, indicating that PhPT1 is a primary ethylene response gene. PhPT1 is a putative phosphate transporter that may function in Pi translocation during senescence

Breaking the Redshift Deadlock - I: Constraining the star formation history of galaxies with sub-millimetre photometric redshifts

Future extragalactic sub-millimetre and millimetre surveys have the potential to provide a sensitive census of the level of obscured star formation in galaxies at all redshifts. While in general there is good agreement between the source counts from existing SCUBA (850um) and MAMBO (1.25mm) surveys of different depths and areas, it remains difficult to determine the redshift distribution and bolometric luminosities of the sub-millimetre and millimetre galaxy population. This is principally due to the ambiguity in identifying an individual sub-millimetre source with its optical, IR or radio counterpart which, in turn, prevents a confident measurement of the spectroscopic redshift. Additionally, the lack of data measuring the rest-frame FIR spectral peak of the sub-millimetre galaxies gives rise to poor constraints on their rest-frame FIR luminosities and star formation rates. In this paper we describe Monte-Carlo simulations of ground-based, balloon-borne and satellite sub-millimetre surveys that demonstrate how the rest-frame FIR-sub-millimetre spectral energy distributions (250-850um) can be used to derive photometric redshifts with an r.m.s accuracy of +/- 0.4 over the range 0 < z < 6. This opportunity to break the redshift deadlock will provide an estimate of the global star formation history for luminous optically-obscured galaxies [L(FIR) > 3 x 10^12 Lsun] with an accuracy of 20 per cent.Comment: 14 pages, 22 figures, submitted to MNRAS, replaced with accepted versio