Frio pilot in CO2 sequestration in brine-bearing sandstones: The University of Texas at Austin, Bureau of Economic Geology, report to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality to accompany a class V application for an experimental technology pilot injection well.

GEOSEQ project (LBNL, LLNL, ORNL), NETL, Schlumberger–Doll Research Center, Transpetco, Sandia TechnologiesJackson School of Geoscience

Older South Island landholders and their land-use decisions : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Philosophy in Geography at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

Relatively little is known about the decisions and practices of rural landowners in Aotearoa/New Zealand and how they are influenced by ageing in later life. This research explored the land-use practices of twelve older land-holders in three rural regions in New Zealand’s South Island. The research was intended to discover if older rural land-holders had made any changes to their land-use over time and if so, the motivations and reasons behind these changes. To understand the role of ageing in land-use decisions, the research examined the values and meanings held by these older people in relation to their rural environments and investigated the possibilities and challenges associated with choices in continuing to manage, stay on, or leave their properties. A mixed methods approach was taken for the research, employing one-on-one, semi-structured interviews and photo elicitation with participants on their properties. Thematic analysis was used to analyse the data. Key themes that emerged were drivers of land-use change, attachment to place, interests and passions, reflection about ageing and future plans. The analysis revealed that the experiences of the twelve participants could be divided into two groups, which reflected shared patterns of land-uses and their reasons for these. Differences related to those who had inherited familial properties or others who had purchased them as individuals. Economic objectives appeared as the main driver for inherited owners across their working lifespan on these properties, whereas for purchasers of properties, the pursuit of a diverse range of personal interests, as well as economics, were significant drivers of land-use decisions. However, nature conservation and protection initiatives were on the minds of all participants at the time of being interviewed. Some had engaged in these activities to a greater extent than others, especially in the latter years of their property tenures. Growing older had caused them to become more philosophical about life and the prospect of retirement. Being in stable enough economic situations provided an opportunity for participants to reflect on their landscapes and consider possibilities of pursuing ideas with environmental care and nature restoration initiatives. Attachment/affinity to landscape was a significant theme, which influenced the meanings and values participants brought to their properties. This also influenced their decision making with respect to retirement, having strong feelings about attachments to place made ideas regarding retirement challenging, whether to leave or remain in place. This research has demonstrated that economic imperatives dominated and drove intensive land-use decisions and patterns for these rural landowners during much of their working lives. However, a combination of financial stability in later life, a deep affinity with the place in which they dwelt and worked, and recognition of the effects of ageing, has provided these older landowners with options as well as possibilities for maintaining connections with the land and landscapes they were attached to. These included embarking on diversification and/ or conservation, which followed personal interests and beliefs, finding ways to stay on or have input into properties while reducing equity or workload, or moving off farm, but dwelling locally to retain connections to landscape and the community. In sum, this thesis has explored the diverse perspectives of a group of twelve older, South Island, rural landholders. The analysis of interviews and photo-elicitation revealed the significant connection between land-use, livelihoods and ageing identities. Personal relationships, economic influences and motivations and a deep sense of attachment to place all contributed to land-use decisions, with the importance and impacts of these factors changing over time as landowners aged

The Effect of Leadership Training on Manufacturing Productivity of Informal Leaders

The purpose of this study was to determine if leadership training, given to informal leaders, had a positive effect on manufacturing productivity. The leadership attributes of informal leaders were assessed using the Leader Attributes Inventory (LAI). Furthermore, the performance of informal leaders was measured using the Leader Effectiveness Index (LEI). Non-management employees from various departments in a manufacturing facility were placed in one of four experimental groups. A Solomon four-group experimental design was employed. A one-group pretest-posttest design was used to control threats to internal validity. The one-way analysis of variance procedure (ANOVA) was used to determine if there were statistically significant increases in manufacturing productivity of informal leaders. Findings suggested that training increased the manufacturing productivity of informal leaders. The increased productivity indicated that leadership training could help manufacturing facilities increase their productivity without capital expenditures. Findings did not indicate a statistically significant difference in leadership attributes. Findings also suggested there were no significant differences in the manufacturing productivity between employees with high leader attributes and low leader attributes. Based on this study, leadership training, given to non-management employees, may yield gains in manufacturing productivity

Sharing economies: Moving beyond binaries in a digital age

In periods of turbulence, the tendency to simplify messages and polarise debates is nothing new. In our hyper-mediated world of online technologies, where it seems that even national policy can be forged in the 140 characters of Twitter, it is more important than ever to retain spaces for in-depth debate of emergent phenomena that have disruptive and transformative potential. In this article, we follow this logic and argue that to fully understand the diverse range of practices and potential consequences of activities uncomfortably corralled under the ambiguous term 'the sharing economy' requires not a simplification of arguments, but an opening out of horizons to explore the many ways in which these phenomena have emerged and are evolving. It is argued that this will require attention to multiple terrains, from diverse intellectual traditions across many disciplines to the thus far largely reactive responses of government and regulation, and from the world of techno-innovation start-ups to the optics of media (including social media) reporting on what it means to 'share' in the 21st century. Building on this, we make the case for viewing 'the sharing economy' as a matrix of diverse economies with clear links to past practices. We propose that to build a grammar for understanding these diverse sharing economies requires further attention to: (1) The etymology of sharing and sharing economies; (2) The differentiated geographies to which sharing economies contribute; (3) What it means to labour, work and be employed in sharing economies; (4) The role of the state and others in governing, regulating and shaping the organisation and practice of sharing economies; and (5) the impacts of sharing economies. In conclusion, we suggest that while media interest may fade as their presence in everyday lives becomes less novel, understanding sharing economies remains an urgent activity if we are to ensure that the new ways of living and labouring, to which sharing economies are contributing, work to promote sustainable and inclusive development in this world that ultimately we all share

Genomic-Bioinformatic Analysis of Transcripts Enriched in the Third-Stage Larva of the Parasitic Nematode Ascaris suum

Differential transcription in Ascaris suum was investigated using a genomic-bioinformatic approach. A cDNA archive enriched for molecules in the infective third-stage larva (L3) of A. suum was constructed by suppressive-subtractive hybridization (SSH), and a subset of cDNAs from 3075 clones subjected to microarray analysis using cDNA probes derived from RNA from different developmental stages of A. suum. The cDNAs (n = 498) shown by microarray analysis to be enriched in the L3 were sequenced and subjected to bioinformatic analyses using a semi-automated pipeline (ESTExplorer). Using gene ontology (GO), 235 of these molecules were assigned to ‘biological process’ (n = 68), ‘cellular component’ (n = 50), or ‘molecular function’ (n = 117). Of the 91 clusters assembled, 56 molecules (61.5%) had homologues/orthologues in the free-living nematodes Caenorhabditis elegans and C. briggsae and/or other organisms, whereas 35 (38.5%) had no significant similarity to any sequences available in current gene databases. Transcripts encoding protein kinases, protein phosphatases (and their precursors), and enolases were abundantly represented in the L3 of A. suum, as were molecules involved in cellular processes, such as ubiquitination and proteasome function, gene transcription, protein–protein interactions, and function. In silico analyses inferred the C. elegans orthologues/homologues (n = 50) to be involved in apoptosis and insulin signaling (2%), ATP synthesis (2%), carbon metabolism (6%), fatty acid biosynthesis (2%), gap junction (2%), glucose metabolism (6%), or porphyrin metabolism (2%), although 34 (68%) of them could not be mapped to a specific metabolic pathway. Small numbers of these 50 molecules were predicted to be secreted (10%), anchored (2%), and/or transmembrane (12%) proteins. Functionally, 17 (34%) of them were predicted to be associated with (non-wild-type) RNAi phenotypes in C. elegans, the majority being embryonic lethality (Emb) (13 types; 58.8%), larval arrest (Lva) (23.5%) and larval lethality (Lvl) (47%). A genetic interaction network was predicted for these 17 C. elegans orthologues, revealing highly significant interactions for nine molecules associated with embryonic and larval development (66.9%), information storage and processing (5.1%), cellular processing and signaling (15.2%), metabolism (6.1%), and unknown function (6.7%). The potential roles of these molecules in development are discussed in relation to the known roles of their homologues/orthologues in C. elegans and some other nematodes. The results of the present study provide a basis for future functional genomic studies to elucidate molecular aspects governing larval developmental processes in A. suum and/or the transition to parasitism

BLAST: Correlations in the Cosmic Far-Infrared Background at 250, 350, and 500 microns Reveal Clustering of Star-Forming Galaxies

We detect correlations in the cosmic far-infrared background due to the clustering of star-forming galaxies in observations made with the Balloon-borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope, BLAST, at 250, 350, and 500 microns. We perform jackknife and other tests to confirm the reality of the signal. The measured correlations are well fit by a power law over scales of 5-25 arcminutes, with Delta I/I = 15.1 +/- 1.7%. We adopt a specific model for submillimeter sources in which the contribution to clustering comes from sources in the redshift ranges 1.3 <= z <= 2.2, 1.5 <= z <= 2.7, and 1.7 <= z <= 3.2, at 250, 350, and 500 microns, respectively. With these distributions, our measurement of the power spectrum, P(k_theta), corresponds to linear bias parameters, b = 3.8 +/- 0.6, 3.9 +/- 0.6 and 4.4 +/- 0.7, respectively. We further interpret the results in terms of the halo model, and find that at the smaller scales, the simplest halo model fails to fit our results. One way to improve the fit is to increase the radius at which dark matter halos are artificially truncated in the model, which is equivalent to having some star-forming galaxies at z >= 1 located in the outskirts of groups and clusters. In the context of this model we find a minimum halo mass required to host a galaxy is log (M_min / M_sun) = 11.5 (+0.4/-0.1), and we derive effective biases $b_eff = 2.2 +/- 0.2, 2.4 +/- 0.2, and 2.6 +/- 0.2, and effective masses log (M_eff / M_sun) = 12.9 +/- 0.3, 12.8 +/- 0.2, and 12.7 +/- 0.2, at 250, 350, and 500 microns, corresponding to spatial correlation lengths of r_0 = 4.9, 5.0, and 5.2 +/- 0.7 h^-1 Mpc, respectively. Finally, we discuss implications for clustering measurement strategies with Herschel and Planck.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Maps and other results available at http://blastexperiment.info