Laura Kephart’s Letter to Leonard Kephart, May 18, 1933

This manuscript is a letter written from Laura Kephart, wife of writer Horace Kephart, to one of their sons, Leonard Wheeler Kephart. In the letter dated May 18th, 1933, only one year after the death of Horace in an automobile accident, Laura asks Leonard to check on copyright information on two of Horace’s books, Camping and Woodcraft and Our Southern Highlanders, and she proposes the addition of a new chapter to each. After this brief business formality, Laura begins to discuss familial matters and give general updates to Leonard on the rest of the family. Leonard’s brother, George, is working up north, presumably as a forester in Maine. Laura offers details on the Moores, Henry and Cornelia, one of Leonard’s sisters; Roy, married to another of Leonard’s sisters, Barbara; and Margaret, yet another sister. Laura then offers her sharp political opinions on recently elected President Franklin D. Roosevelt. She concludes the letter by writing about an unknown “Phil”, and finally, offering an update on the Fernows, Karl and Lucy, Lucy being the last Kephart child mentioned. An interesting note on the Fernows is that Karl and Lucy were in Germany at the time. Karl was on sabbatical from his professor position at Cornell University to travel overseas to study agricultural diseases, mainly in potatoes. While there, Karl’s laboratory host, Dr. Ernst Schaffnit, was arrested due to unknown circumstances, but perhaps related to the newly appointed Chancellor of Germany, Adolf Hitler, and his Nazi regime

Solar farm hourly dispatching using a supercapacitor and battery energy storage system

While most research on solar energy has been concentrated on smoothing intermittent powerbeing pushed into the power grid, this research is focused on improving the complete integrationof solar energy into the power grid by dispatching, or supplying a constant level of power, for 1-hour time periods. A hybrid energy storage system (HESS), consisting of lead-acid batteries andsupercapacitors, will absorb and supply the necessary levels of power to keep the systems outputpower constant. The demand on the overall HESS and the two components in HESS, lead-acid batteries and supercapacitors, will maintain the constant level of power to dispatch. Thepredicted level of output power, for a one hour dispatching period, is determined by an estimationalgorithm that uses actual solar data from Oak Ridge National Laboratory collected every minutethroughout the day. This research shows results from June 9th, 2015, June 10th, 2015, June 12th,2015, and December 25th, 2015 between 5:00 AM and 7:59 PM [3]. The estimation algorithmincorporates the solar irradiance and temperature to estimate the PV arrays average outputpower and its eciency. The demand on the HESS is sent through a low-pass lter with a timeconstant of 1-minute that is then used as the reference for the lead-acid batteries. The remainingdemand on the HESS is used as the reference for the supercapacitors. This utilizes the lead-acidbatteries high energy density property, or slow charge/discharge rates at high energy levels, andthe supercapacitors high power density property, or rapid charge/discharge rates at low energylevels [1, 4]

Laura Kephart’s Letter to Leonard Kephart, September 16, 1933

This manuscript is a letter written from Laura Kephart, wife of writer Horace Kephart, to one of their sons, Leonard. In the letter dated September 16th, 1933, Laura discusses news she had read in the Christian Science Monitor, Laura’s newspaper of choice. She relays that the Appalachian Trail will soon be completed from Georgia to Maine and asks Leonard to gather some more information on the trail from the Appalachian Trail Conference, based out of Washington, D.C. At this time Leonard was working as a senior agronomist for the Department of Agriculture in Washington. Laura briefly gives news on political goings on and then discusses Thanksgiving travel plans for much of the Kephart family

Figuring out acquisition models with data: A beginner's approach to analyzing ebooks

As ebook acquisition models are developed and continue to evolve, how can we evaluate our collection acquisition practices to ensure cost effectiveness? Which metrics will be essential to demonstrate a good return on investment? With title, order, and usage information needing to be acquired from different sources, this is not always a straightforward undertaking. Finding a way to accurately synthesize the data in a meaningful way can seem daunting.This poster looks at how the library at Western Carolina University assessed their current methods of acquiring ebooks. The poster will detail the scope of the project, how the data was synthesized, the trends and metrics identified, the recommendations made based on the collected data, and the library’s future plans for assessment

Things happening

While playing and investigating with an array of materials, objects, and processes in the studio, I try to make sense of how I experience the world around me. This experimentation and play, combined with an ever-present curiosity brings me to an underlying question in my present work –How does someone come to determine what is considered final when considering the ‘life’ of a piece? Is it a finished product? Is it constantly changing or developing? What, if any, is its final state? My research shows itself in kinetic installations, drawing machines, robots, and other various machines that I adapt to the locale. When making my work I choose to design hand-made components and source found and re-appropriated objects, further expanding communication through a visual vernacular. Much of the work, shown as installation, allows for travel to different environs sparking new questions, which in turn, lead to more avenues fueling my excitement and curiosity further. Arranging and displaying my artwork in each setting or context it encounters is an interesting challenge and critical to its operation. Finally the viewers’ reactions and engagement helps inform my practice

Characterizing the rheological properties of wax emulsions used as carriers for biopesticides in agricultural pest management

The purpose of this research was to characterize the rheological properties of various wax emulsions developed as carriers for biopesticides used for agricultural pest management. Wax emulsions have been developed as carriers for the controlled release of non-toxic materials such as insect pheromones and essential oils used in crop protection as part of Integrated Pest Management (IPM) programs. However, the rheological properties of these wax emulsion carriers had not been evaluated and reported in the literature. Therefore, to obtain a more thorough evaluation of these wax emulsions, the rheological properties were characterized.The data collected can be used to determine the best rheological properties for different field application methods. In this research, wax emulsions were prepared using different formulations, such as different waxes, emulsfiers, and biopesticides, and different concentrations of each. These emulsions were tested using an Anton Paar® Physica MCR 101 rheometer. The goal was to characterize the rheological properties to understand how the various components affect the overall behavior and application of these emulsions. The biopesiticides explored were insect pheromones used for mating disruption in IPM and essential oils that are used as deer feeding deterrents for crops and landscaping plants. Geranyl propionate was used as a substitute for insect pheromones because it is structurally similar to many insect sex pheromones and is less expensive. The insect pheromone emulsions had a high viscosity allowing the emulsions to be applied in thick masses with a low surface area to achieve long term release of the volatile pheromones. Wax emulsions were also prepared with a small concentration of spearmint oil, which has been shown to be an effective feeding deterrent for white-tailed deer. The emulsions containing spearmint oil were prepared with a lower viscosity compared to the insect pheromone emulsions. This was done so that the emulsions could be effectively sprayed onto plant surfaces. It was found that both paran wax and soy wax were effective for the insect pheromone emulsions. However, when investigating the deer feeding deterrent emulsions, the soy wax emulsions displayed rheological properties more suited for spraying

Serials and Continuing Resources

Chapter 4 of the book Assessment Strategies in Technical Services, edited by Kimberly A. Edwards and Michelle Leonard. This chapter focuses on the main area of assessment for continuing resources: conducting a serials review. The majority of the chapter is given over to describing the process for undertaking large-scale collection review projects. The focus on serials includes journals, periodicals, standing orders, newspapers, and microfilm subscriptions; it omits databases, streaming resources, and other aggregated online research content. Special consideration is given to the review of large packages of e-journals—typically referred to as “Big Deals.

The relationship between working memory and gait performance

The purpose of this study was to establish how performance in cognitive (i.e., working memory) and motor (i.e., gait) tasks vary when the tasks are performed in isolation and concurrently. Sixteen collegiate students, three males and 13 females, comprised the sample. The hypothesis was gait performance would decline when performed with a working memory task (dual-task condition) compared to when gait performance was performed alone (single task condition). I expected that an increase in working memory requirements during the dual tasks would lead to a corresponding decrement in gait performance by shifting gait toward maladaptive behavior. The results did not support my hypothesis. A MANOVA was used to determine if task condition influenced performance in any of the gait performance metrics (stride interval standard mean, standard deviation, or DFA α) or cognitive performance metrics (absolute score, partial score, speed error, accuracy error, or math error). No differences were observed in any of the gait or cognitive metrics as a function of the task condition. It is possible that differences were not found in gait performance metrics because the cognitive task and gait task were not drawing from the same resources. It is also conceivable that the cognitive task used in this study did not significantly tax memory to cause a decrement in gait performance

"Quare" Fiction: Symbiosis in Lucy Furman's Settlement School Novels

Lucy Furman, 1870-1958, wrote five novels based on experiences of herself and her colleagues at the Hindman Settlement School in the rural Appalachian Mountains of eastern Kentucky. Furman's writing presents characters in a way that enables readers to identify with Appalachian culture, a contrast to many of her contemporaries who likened the area to not "of American". This paper firstly examines Furman's writing in an historical context, before moving on to the look at author's position in Appalachian Studies and Literature. Finally, there is a close reading of Furman's first settlement school novel, "Mothering on Perilous", first published in 1913

Crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh: Sociocultural Underpinnings and Political Barriers to the 2016-2018 Rohingya Ethnic Cleansing

2018 University Libraries Undergraduate Research Award Winner---On October 9, 2016, armed residents of Rakhine, Myanmar ambushed three Border Guard posts, triggering a massive military backlash against the local Rohingya population. United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra‘ad al-Hussein has described the military's actions as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing," and nearly 1.04 million Rohingya have sought refuge in neighboring Bangladesh since the crisis erupted. This scope of violence and displacement begs the following questions: are there underlying social causes to the 2016-2018 Rohingya ethnic cleansing crisis beyond the October 9, 2016 ambush, and if so, how can these underlying social causes inform appropriate solutions moving forward? Further, what political barriers stand in the way of resolution? Utilizing a qualitative research analysis this project identified which social causes have contributed to the current crisis’s emergence: 1) periods of political turnover from 1784 to 1826, 2) the historical tension between Buddhist and Muslim communities in Rakhine, and 3) the military’s functional defense of the Burmese-Buddhist identity. Using these findings, this project then evaluates the 2017 bilateral repatriation agreement between Myanmar and Bangladesh, concluding that the agreement is insufficient to address underlying social causes to the crisis, and argues that future relief efforts rather should prioritize local, aid-based solutions and humanitarian concerns in Bangladesh