Reforestation of harvested Timberlands in Mississippi: Behavior and Attitudes of Non-Industrial, Private Forest Landowners

Southern forests play an increasingly important role in the timber economy as per capita demand for wood continues to expand. Moreover, harvest restrictions in the Pacific Northwest in the early 1990s shifted a large portion of United States demand for softwoods to the South. In Mississippi, most of the forestland is owned by non-industrial private forest (NIPF) landowners. Approximately 314,000 NIPF landowners control 66 percent of the state’s forestland base (Hartsell and London 1995). The sizable acreage of timberland held by NIPF landowners nationally and in-state underscores the importance of their role in the timber economy and weighs heavily in the supply of raw material to the state’s $11.4 billion forest products industry (Munn 1998)

Inferring Quantum Network Topology using Local Measurements

Statistical correlations that can be generated across the nodes in a quantum network depend crucially on its topology. However, this topological information might not be known a priori, or it may need to be verified. In this paper, we propose an efficient protocol for distinguishing and inferring the topology of a quantum network. We leverage entropic quantities -- namely, the von Neumann entropy and the measured mutual information -- as well as measurement covariance to uniquely characterize the topology. We show that the entropic quantities are sufficient to distinguish two networks that prepare GHZ states. Moreover, if qubit measurements are available, both entropic quantities and covariance can be used to infer the network topology. We show that the protocol can be entirely robust to noise and can be implemented via quantum variational optimization. Numerical experiments on both classical simulators and quantum hardware show that covariance is generally more reliable for accurately and efficiently inferring the topology, whereas entropy-based methods are often better at identifying the absence of entanglement in the low-shot regime

Geodemographic approaches to identifying U.S. furniture markets

Demand for household furniture is shaped by a multitude of dynamic forces, from the global economic situation to subtle changes in consumer preferences. Correspondingly, the academic disciplines employed to identify, analyze, and predict these forces range from macroeconomics to psychology, and include demography, sociology, geography, and several applied fields. The demographic characteristics of furniture consumers has been a particularly popular area of research, primarily because of the availability of secondary data from various public · agencies. Some of this research is reviewed in a subsequent section of this report

Eukaryotic influence on the oceanic biological carbon pump in the Scotia Sea as revealed by 18S rRNA gene sequencing of suspended and sinking particles

Suspended marine particles constitute most of the particulate organic matter pool in the oceans, thereby providing substantial substrates for heterotrophs, especially in the mesopelagic. Conversely, sinking particles are major contributors to carbon fluxes defining the strength of the biological carbon pump (BCP). This study is the first to investigate the differential influence of eukaryotic communities to suspended and sinking particles, using 18S rRNA gene sequencing on particles collected with a marine snow catcher in the mixed layer and upper mesopelagic of the Scotia Sea, Southern Ocean. In the upper mesopelagic, most eukaryotic phytoplankton sequences belonged to chain‐forming diatoms in sinking particles and to prymnesiophytes in suspended particles. This suggests that diatom‐enriched particles are more efficient in carbon transfer to the upper mesopelagic than those enriched in prymnesiophytes in the Scotia Sea, the latter more easily disintegrating into suspended particles. In the upper mesopelagic, copepods appeared most influential on sinking particles whereas soft‐tissue metazoan sequences contributed more to suspended particles. Heterotrophic protists and fungi communities were distinct between mixed layer and upper mesopelagic, implying that few protists ride along sinking particles. Furthermore, differences between predatory flagellates and radiolarians between suspended and sinking particles implied different ecological conditions between the two particles pools, and roles in the BCP. Molecular analyses of sinking and suspended particles constitute powerful diagnostic tools to study the eukaryotic influence on the BCP in a more holistic manner compared to classic carbon export studies focusing on sinking particles

Stability problem for the torque-free gyrostat by using algebraic methods

We apply an algebraic method for studying the stability with respect to a set of conserved quantities for the problem of torque-free gyrostat. If the conditions of this algebraic method are not fulfilled then the Lyapunov stability cannot be decided using the specified set of conserved quantities

Exploring the Microbiome of Healthy and Diseased Peri-Implant Sites Using Illumina Sequencing

Aim To compare the microbiome of healthy (H) and diseased (P) peri-implant sites and determine the core peri-implant microbiome. Materials and Methods Submucosal biofilms from 32 H and 35 P sites were analyzed using 16S rRNA sequencing (MiSeq, Illumina), QIIME and HOMINGS. Differences between groups were determined using Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA), t-tests and Wilcoxon rank sum test and FDR-adjusted. The peri-implant core microbiome was determined. Results PCoA showed partitioning between H and P at all taxonomic levels. Bacteroidetes, Spirochetes and Synergistetes were higher in P, while Actinobacteria prevailed in H (p\u3c0.05). Porphyromonas and Treponema were more abundant in P and while Rothia and Neisseria were higher in H (p\u3c0.05). The core peri-implant microbiome contained Fusobacterium, Parvimonas and Campylobacter sp. T. denticola and P. gingivalis levels were higher in P, as well as F. alocis, F fastidiosum and T. maltophilum (p\u3c0.05). Conclusion The peri-implantitis microbiome is commensal-depleted and pathogen-enriched, harboring traditional and new pathogens. The core peri-implant microbiome harbors taxa from genera often associated with periodontal inflammation

Bioinformatic Characterization of Genes and Proteins Involved in Blood Clotting in Lampreys

Lampreys and hagfish are the earliest diverging of extant vertebrates and are obvious targets for investigating the origins of complex biochemical systems found in mammals. Currently, the simplest approach for such inquiries is to search for the presence of relevant genes in whole genome sequence (WGS) assemblies. Unhappily, in the past a high-quality complete genome sequence has not been available for either lampreys or hagfish, precluding the possibility of proving gene absence. Recently, improved but still incomplete genome assemblies for two species of lamprey have been posted, and, taken together with an extensive collection of short sequences in the NCBI trace archive, they have made it possible to make reliable counts for specific gene families. Particularly, a multi-source tactic has been used to study the lamprey blood clotting system with regard to the presence and absence of genes known to occur in higher vertebrates. As was suggested in earlier studies, lampreys lack genes for coagulation factors VIII and IX, both of which are critical for the "intrinsic" clotting system and responsible for hemophilia in humans. On the other hand, they have three each of genes for factors VII and X, participants in the "extrinsic" clotting system. The strategy of using raw trace sequence "reads" together with partial WGS assemblies for lampreys can be used in studies on the early evolution of other biochemical systems in vertebrates

Statistical Mechanics of Glass Formation in Molecular Liquids with OTP as an Example

We extend our statistical mechanical theory of the glass transition from examples consisting of point particles to molecular liquids with internal degrees of freedom. As before, the fundamental assertion is that super-cooled liquids are ergodic, although becoming very viscous at lower temperatures, and are therefore describable in principle by statistical mechanics. The theory is based on analyzing the local neighborhoods of each molecule, and a statistical mechanical weight is assigned to every possible local organization. This results in an approximate theory that is in very good agreement with simulations regarding both thermodynamical and dynamical properties

Theory and Techniques for Vibration-Induced Conductivity Fluctuation testing of Soils

First we present and theoretically analyze the phenomenological physical picture behind Vibration-Induced Conductivity Fluctuations. We identify the relevant tensors characterizing the electromechanical response against the vibrations for both longitudinal and transversal responses. We analyze the conductivity response with acceleration type vibrations and a new scheme, measurements with more advantageous compression type vibrations that are first introduced here. Compression vibrations provide sideband spectral lines shifted by the frequency of the vibration instead of its second harmonics; moreover the application of this method is less problematic with loose electrodes. Concerning geometry and electrodes, the large measurement errors in earlier experiment indicated electrode effects which justify using four-electrode type measurements. We propose and analyze new arrangements for the longitudinal and transversal measurements with both compression vibration and acceleration vibration for laboratory and field conditions