The Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus: An Advocacy Tool for the 21st Century

Historic Preservation depends a great deal on national, state, and local legislative action from both a regulatory and funding perspective. To advocate successfully on behalf of a national historic preservation policy agenda, a comprehensive understanding of the nuances of the federal legislative process along with a strong insight into the internal and external dynamics feeding into that process are vital. At the federal level, many legislators choose to organize into partisan, bipartisan or bicameral groups, commonly called Congressional Member Organizations (CMOs) or caucuses, with the intent to pursue common legislative objectives, coordinate actions and affect policy within their legislative body. The Congressional Historic Preservation Caucus (CHPC) is such a group. The mission of this particular bipartisan caucus, formed at the beginning of the 108th Congress (2003-2004) within the U.S. House of Representatives, is based on the recognition that successful federal historic preservation policy requires coordination and advocacy efforts between federal, state, local, public, and private groups. The assumption is that these coordinated efforts, particularly when executed at the federal level with the help of caucus members and their staffs, can greatly enhance the probability of positive legislative outcomes for historic preservation

The influence of teaching techniques on the aggressive behavior of four-year-olds.

Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universit

Analysis of Potential Anticoagulants by Conventional Assays

Blood clots affect over half a million Americans each year and have a high mortality rate. Current anticoagulants have been historically successful, but can dangerously increase bleeding risk. Using chromogenic substrate assays, I tested almost 1,000 compounds from the Tidwell library of cationic compounds and analyzed their ability to inhibit five specific coagulation proteases that are involved in blood clot formation. A small number of promising compounds inhibited only one coagulation enzyme. Another member of my lab performed Prothrombin Time (PT) and Activated Partial Thromboplastin Time (APTT) assays for each of these compounds. Further analysis showed that the compounds that were deemed successful in the PT and APTT had very little overlap with those that successfully inhibited only one coagulation enzyme. These results suggest that current clinical assay methods may not be ideal indicators of thrombotic state. These studies provide useful insight into how to assess successful anticoagulants and will ideally result in a new therapeutic antithrombotic.Bachelor of Scienc

Multiplying Integers: on the diverse practices of medieval Sanskrit authors

International audienceWe examine the diverse ways Brahmagupta (628 CE), Mahāvīra (ca. 850), Śrīdhara (ca. 750-900) and their commentators understood how a multiplication could be executed. We describe a variety of algorithms. We note how commentators give us clues to how numbers are shaped for execution, how the procedure is displayed on a working surface, etc. We attempt to evaluate in which ways resources of the decimal place value notation were used. The current historiography of elementary operations in Sanskrit sources is also revised along the way

Model compilation: An approach to automated model derivation

An approach is introduced to automated model derivation for knowledge based systems. The approach, model compilation, involves procedurally generating the set of domain models used by a knowledge based system. With an implemented example, how this approach can be used to derive models of different precision and abstraction is illustrated, and models are tailored to different tasks, from a given set of base domain models. In particular, two implemented model compilers are described, each of which takes as input a base model that describes the structure and behavior of a simple electromechanical device, the Reaction Wheel Assembly of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. The compilers transform this relatively general base model into simple task specific models for troubleshooting and redesign, respectively, by applying a sequence of model transformations. Each transformation in this sequence produces an increasingly more specialized model. The compilation approach lessens the burden of updating and maintaining consistency among models by enabling their automatic regeneration

Phytoextraction capacity of trees growing on a metal contaminated soil

Phytoremediation is an innovative biological technique to reclaim land contaminated by heavy metals or organic pollutants. In the present work, we studied the ability of five woody species to extract heavy metal (copper, zinc or cadmium) from a polluted soil to their above-ground tissues. Metal content in leaves and twigs was determined. Salix and Betula transferred zinc and cadmium to leaves and twigs, but Alnus, Fraxinus and Sorbus excluded them from their above-ground tissues. None of the species considered transferred copper to the shoot

PREDICTING SOYBEAN WEIGHT PER POD

The National Agricultural Statistics Service (NASS) makes predictions of soybean yield at both the state and national level. Experience indicates that the key to improving yield predictions is improving the prediction of soybean weight pod. Towards this end, NASS has entered into a three year cooperative agreement with the Department of Plant, Soil and General Agriculture at Southern lllinois University at Carbondale (SID-C) to investigate predictive models for soybean weight per pod based on a measurement of pod width and a count of the number of seeds per pod. Aside from the scientific issues involved in this effort, the practical issues of eventually developing procedures which can be implemented in the context of the NASS Objective Yield Survey, which is an immense data collection effort, must be addressed by this cooperative effort. The results obtained from the three years of this cooperative effort will provide a useful starting point for further work in this direction

Etude du cycle biogéochimique du cuivre et du cadmium dans deux écosystèmes forestiers

The biogeochemical cycle of copper and cadmium has been studied in two forested ecosystems for two years. These two sites are: a) a Norway spruce forest (Picea abies) on an acid brown soil (FAQ: Dystric cambisol) and b) a mixed coniferous forest (Picea abies, Pinus cembra, Larix decidua and Abies alba) on a podzol. Both of them are located on low heavy metal polluted sites: the Swiss Plateau (850 m a.s.l.) for the first one and the oriental edge of the Mont-Blanc Massif (1650 m a.s.l.) for the second one. The Cu and Cd stocks in the vegetation and in the soil are evaluated. Heavy metal fluxes through the ecosystems are determined by analysis of concentrations and quantities of rain, throughfalls, stemflows, lysimetric soil solution and litterfall. In addition, the forms of Cu and Cd immobilization in soils are studied by means of sequential extraction, whereas immobilization forms in solution are studied by means of ion exchange chromatography and selective electrode. The results obtained allowed us to draw conclusions concerning the general pollution level in the experimental sites and the annual and/or detailed behaviour of Cu and Cd in the ecosystems. The conclusions are the following: As expected, the sites are not polluted since concentrations and fluxes are low. The chemical composition of solutions is modified during transition through the ecosystem, especially the copper concentrations. The acid brown soil humic layer is more efficient than the podzol humic layer in modifying this composition. There is no significant seasonal variation of concentrations and fluxes. However, the metal diffusion through the ecosystem is almost immediate. The soil plays an essential role in the immobilization of the heavy metals. The organic and organo-mineral layers are particularly active in this process. Exportations out of the ecosystems are limited. They are relatively more important for the podzol than for the acid brown soil and higher for Cd than for Cu. Transfer and stocking forms, and the ways of input to the soil depend on the metal considered: Copper input to the soil is mainly due to litterfall. In the soil, the metal has a preference to be associated with organic matter. In solution, it forms complexes with dissolved organic matter (mainly fulvic acid of MW < 1000 dalton). So, it is strongly retained within the soil and it cannot be easily drained out of the soil profile. At the opposite, cadmium is mostly transported by liquid means (throughfalls). In solution, it is present as free cadmium ions. In the soil, it is less strongly fixed than Cu since Cd is mostly associated with Fe and Mn oxides. For both of the metals, the free ion concentration in solution depends on pH and the saturation rate of organic matter. The latter has a heterogenous and polyfunctional character which explains a similar complexing capacity for all the samples studied. The differences observed in copper and cadmium behaviour can explain the variable diffusion of a polluting Cu and Cd flux through a given ecosystem and to the aquifer. The soil intervenes as a discriminating factor when the two experimental sites are compared

Molecular characterization of a new type of receptor-like kinase (wlrk) gene family in wheat

In plants, several types of receptor-like kinases (RLK) have been isolated and characterized based on the sequence of their extracellular domains. Some of these RLKs have been demonstrated to be involved in plant development or in the reaction to environmental signals. Here, we describe a RLK gene family in wheat (wlrk, wheat leaf rust kinase) with a new type of extracellular domain. A member of this new gene family has previously been shown to cosegregate with the leaf rust resistance gene Lr10. The diversity of the wlrk gene family was studied by cloning the extracellular domain of different members of the family. Sequence comparisons demonstrated that the extracellular domain consists of three very conserved regions interrupted by three variable regions. Linkage analysis indicated that the wlrk genes are specifically located on chromosome group 1 in wheat and on the corresponding chromosomes of other members of the Triticeae family. The wlrk genes are constitutively expressed in the aerial parts of the plant whereas no expression was detected in roots. Protein immunoblots demonstrated that the WLRK protein coded by the Lrk10 gene is an intrinsic plasma membrane protein. This is consistent with the hypothesis that WLRK proteins are receptor protein kinases localized to the cell surface. In addition, we present preliminary evidence that other disease resistance loci in wheat contain genes which are related to wlr