Determining the profitability of timber stand improvement investments

"You can increase the financial return from a tract (stand) of Missouri forest land by improving tree quality and woodland composition. Timber Stand Improvement (TSI) includes a broad range of practices: site preparation, thinning, release, pruning, and vine and weed removal."--First page.William B. Kurtz and Carol B. Trokey (School of Forestry, Fisheries and Wildlife, College of Agriculture)New 8/84/8

The cooperative forest management program : suggestions for improvement

Cover title."April 1988.""Issued in furtherance of Cooperative Extension Work Acts of May 8 and June 30, 1914 in cooperation with the United States Department of Agriculture ... Cooperative Extension Service, University of Missouri and Lincoln University, Columbia, Missouri.""Funding provided by Missouri Department of Conservation, Division of Forestry and University of Missouri-Columbia.

Founders Online: Early Access: Reflections on Open Access, Crowd Sourcing, and Metadata Standards

Founders Online, a digital initiative of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) of the U.S. National Archives, launched in June 2013. Since its debut, the site has attracted over a million visitors interested in learning more about the creation of the United States of America in the words of six of its Founding Fathers. Founders Online contains 177,000 letters or other writings of these men and their contemporaries. Widely used by academics and the general public, the site has demonstrated the value of digital humanities’ emphasis on free access. As a former assistant editor at Documents Compass, a program of the Virginia Foundation of the Humanities, I served as a project manager on the Early Access portion of the project. We worked directly with the staffs of the currently active Founding Fathers documentary editing projects to make preliminary versions of unpublished documents available for early viewing on Founders Online. These Early Access documents will eventually be replaced by fully vetted and annotated versions to be completed later by the documentary editing projects. Relying on a large staff of over thirty people, we transcribed or proofread over 50,000 Early Access documents from 2012 to 2015. My Early Access experience demonstrated the need to give employees constant feedback, to reward them for good work, and to encourage specialization among project staff. My experience also reemphasized the need for unified metadata standards when aggregating different sets of data from multiple projects into a single digital platform.  Founders Online, une initiative numérique de la National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) des Archives nationales des États-Unis, lancée en juin 2013. Depuis ses débuts, le site a attiré plus d’un million de visiteurs intéressés à en apprendre davantage au sujet de la création des États-Unis d’Amérique d’après six des pères fondateurs. Founders Online contient 177,000 lettres ou autres écrits de ces hommes et de leurs contemporains. Largement utilisé par les universitaires et le public en général, le site a démontré la valeur de l’emphase des humanités numériques sur le libre accès. En tant qu’ancien rédacteur en chef adjoint à Documents Compass, un programme de la Virginia Foundation of the Humanities, j’ai travaillé comme gestionnaire de projet pour la partie d’accès anticipé du projet. Nous avons travaillé directement avec les membres du personnel des projets de montage documentaire de Founding Fathers actifs à l’heure actuelle, pour rendre disponibles en accès anticipé des versions préliminaires de documents non publiés sur Founders Online. Ces documents en accès anticipé seront éventuellement remplacés par des versions entièrement approuvées et annotées qui seront complétées plus tard par les projets de montage documentaire. Comptant sur un personnel nombreux de plus de trente personnes, nous avons transcrit ou relu plus de 50,000 documents d’accès anticipé entre 2012 et 2015. Mon expérience de l’accès anticipé a démontré le besoin de donner aux employés une rétroaction constante, de les récompenser pour leur bon travail, et d’encourager la spécialisation parmi le personnel du projet. Mon expérience a de plus souligné davantage le besoin de normes de métadonnées communes en transposant différents ensembles de données de projets multiples en une plateforme numérique unique.  Mots-clés: Founders Online; Libre accès; transcription; métadonnées; externalisation à grande échelle; Histoire numériqu

An Analysis of the retention, condition and land use implications of tree plantings established under the Soil Bank Program, the Forestry Incentives Program and the Agricultural Conservation Program

Cover title."This study was completed under Cooperative Agreement No. 42-575 between the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service; Northeastern Area State and Private Forestry ... ; and the School of Natural Resources, University of Missouri, Columbia, Mo. ... Additional funding was provided by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency."Includes bibliographical references

Maintaining woodland tax records (1994)

Revised 3/94/5M

Estimation of Sea Ice Thickness Distributions through the Combination of Snow Depth and Satellite Laser Altimetry Data

Combinations of sea ice freeboard and snow depth measurements from satellite data have the potential to provide a means to derive global sea ice thickness values. However, large differences in spatial coverage and resolution between the measurements lead to uncertainties when combining the data. High resolution airborne laser altimeter retrievals of snow-ice freeboard and passive microwave retrievals of snow depth taken in March 2006 provide insight into the spatial variability of these quantities as well as optimal methods for combining high resolution satellite altimeter measurements with low resolution snow depth data. The aircraft measurements show a relationship between freeboard and snow depth for thin ice allowing the development of a method for estimating sea ice thickness from satellite laser altimetry data at their full spatial resolution. This method is used to estimate snow and ice thicknesses for the Arctic basin through the combination of freeboard data from ICESat, snow depth data over first-year ice from AMSR-E, and snow depth over multiyear ice from climatological data. Due to the non-linear dependence of heat flux on ice thickness, the impact on heat flux calculations when maintaining the full resolution of the ICESat data for ice thickness estimates is explored for typical winter conditions. Calculations of the basin-wide mean heat flux and ice growth rate using snow and ice thickness values at the 70 m spatial resolution of ICESat are found to be approximately one-third higher than those calculated from 25 km mean ice thickness values

Genetically engineered E. coli Nissle attenuates hyperammonemia and prevents memory impairment in bile‐duct ligated rats

Hyperammonemia associated with chronic liver disease (CLD) is implicated in the pathogenesis of hepatic encephalopathy (HE). The gut is a major source of ammonia production that contributes to hyperammonemia in CLD and HE and remains the primary therapeutic target for lowering hyperammonemia. As an ammonia‐lowering strategy, Escherichia coli Nissle 1917 bacterium was genetically modified to consume and convert ammonia to arginine (S‐ARG). S‐ARG was further modified to additionally synthesize butyrate (S‐ARG+BUT). Both strains were evaluated in bile‐duct ligated (BDL) rats; experimental model of CLD and HE. Methods One‐week post‐surgery, BDLs received non‐modified EcN (EcN), S‐ARG, S‐ARG+BUT (3x1011 CFU/day) or vehicle until sacrifice at 3‐ or 5‐weeks. Plasma (ammonia/pro‐inflammatory/liver‐function), liver fibrosis (hydroxyproline), liver mRNA (pro‐inflammatory/fibrogenic/anti‐apoptotic) and colon mRNA (pro‐inflammatory) biomarkers were measured post‐sacrifice. Memory, motor‐coordination, muscle‐strength, and locomotion were assessed at 5‐weeks. Results In BDL‐Veh rats, hyperammonemia developed at 3‐ and further increased at 5‐weeks. This rise was prevented by S‐ARG and S‐ARG+BUT, whereas EcN was ineffective. Memory impairment was prevented only in S‐ARG+BUT vs BDL‐Veh. Systemic inflammation (IL‐10/MCP‐1/endotoxin) increased at 3‐ and 5‐weeks in BDL‐Veh. S‐ARG+BUT attenuated inflammation at both timepoints (except 5‐week endotoxin) vs BDL‐Veh, whereas S‐ARG only attenuated IP‐10 and MCP‐1 at 3‐weeks. Circulating (ALT/AST/ALP/GGT/albumin/bilirubin) and gene expression liver‐function markers (IL‐10/IL‐6/IL‐1β/TGF‐β/α‐SMA/collagen‐1α1/Bcl‐2) were not normalized by either strain. Colonic mRNA (TNF‐α/IL‐1β/occludin) markers were attenuated by synthetic strains at both timepoints vs BDL‐Veh. Conclusion S‐ARG and S‐ARG+BUT attenuated hyperammonemia, with S‐ARG+BUT additional memory protection likely due to greater anti‐inflammatory effect. These innovative strategies, particularly S‐ARG+BUT, have potential to prevent HE

RNA dependent DNA synthesis in cell free preparations of human leukemia cells

A cell free preparation of human leukemic cells, grown in tissue culture, incorporated H3-thymidine phosphate into an acid insoluble product which was rendered acid soluble by the action of DNAase but not KOH or RNAase. RNAase, if added before incubation of the reaction mixture, prevented incorporation of the isotope into the product. For maximum incorporation Mg and all four deoxyribonucleotide triphosphates must be present. The enzyme has the properties of an RNA dependent DNA polymerase.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/33705/1/0000217.pd

KOI-54: The Kepler Discovery of Tidally Excited Pulsations and Brightenings in a Highly Eccentric Binary

Kepler observations of the star HD 187091 (KIC 8112039, hereafter KOI-54) revealed a remarkable light curve exhibiting sharp periodic brightening events every 41.8 days with a superimposed set of oscillations forming a beating pattern in phase with the brightenings. Spectroscopic observations revealed that this is a binary star with a highly eccentric orbit, e = 0.83. We are able to match the Kepler light curve and radial velocities with a nearly face-on (i = 5 degrees.5) binary star model in which the brightening events are caused by tidal distortion and irradiation of nearly identical A stars during their close periastron passage. The two dominant oscillations in the light curve, responsible for the beating pattern, have frequencies that are the 91st and 90th harmonic of the orbital frequency. The power spectrum of the light curve, after removing the binary star brightening component, reveals a large number of pulsations, 30 of which have a signal-to-noise ratio greater than or similar to 7. Nearly all of these pulsations have frequencies that are either integer multiples of the orbital frequency or are tidally split multiples of the orbital frequency. This pattern of frequencies unambiguously establishes the pulsations as resonances between the dynamic tides at periastron and the free oscillation modes of one or both of the stars. KOI-54 is only the fourth star to show such a phenomenon and is by far the richest in terms of excited modes.NASA, Science Mission DirectorateNASA NNX08AR14GEuropean Research Council under the European Community 227224W.M. Keck FoundationMcDonald Observator

Lumpability Abstractions of Rule-based Systems

The induction of a signaling pathway is characterized by transient complex formation and mutual posttranslational modification of proteins. To faithfully capture this combinatorial process in a mathematical model is an important challenge in systems biology. Exploiting the limited context on which most binding and modification events are conditioned, attempts have been made to reduce the combinatorial complexity by quotienting the reachable set of molecular species, into species aggregates while preserving the deterministic semantics of the thermodynamic limit. Recently we proposed a quotienting that also preserves the stochastic semantics and that is complete in the sense that the semantics of individual species can be recovered from the aggregate semantics. In this paper we prove that this quotienting yields a sufficient condition for weak lumpability and that it gives rise to a backward Markov bisimulation between the original and aggregated transition system. We illustrate the framework on a case study of the EGF/insulin receptor crosstalk.Comment: In Proceedings MeCBIC 2010, arXiv:1011.005