Rainfall and Soils, Not Grazing Intensity, Determine the Composition and Productivity of Annual Plants in a Biodiverse Arid Winter Rainfall Region

Concentration of grazer activity around watering points and stock posts has led to well-documented vegetation impacts in arid and semi-arid rangelands. Effect of grazing and abiotic factors on perennial plant diversity have been reported in the bio-diverse winter rainfall vegetation of the Succulent Karoo in South Africa, but the impact on annuals had not been investigated. The aim of this study was to assess the effect of rainfall, soil nutrients, land forms and grazing on forage depletion, soil chemistry and the composition, diversity, richness and biomass production of annual plants in the Richtersveld National park, which is a contractual national park used by semi-nomadic pastoralists to herd goats and sheep. A grazing gradient away from stock posts at 100m, 500m and 1000m on sandy plains and rocky foothills at five study sites with different mean annual rainfall and vegetation types were used. Distance from stock posts corresponded to a gradient of forage depletion and resulted in changes in soil chemistry with distance. Biomass production, richness and diversity of annuals were correlated with rainfall but not significantly affected by landform or distance from stock posts. Rainfall and soil variables had a greater influence on species composition than grazing in this arid ecosystem. The decrease in perennial cover and richness near the stock posts was not accompanied by increase in biomass production or richness of annuals, which is expected to have adverse effects on overall plant diversity and forage availability. Keywords: Piosphere, Pastoralists, Rangeland, Succulent Karoo DOI: 10.7176/JNSR/12-10-04 Publication date:May 31st 202

Oceans apart: women readers in the Nineteenth-century British and American novel

This dissertation provides a transatlantic, historical approach to women's reading, analyzing within that context representations of fictional women readers, bearing in mind the cultural anxiety surrounding "the reading habit." These fictional readers contributed to the phenomenon of "the woman reader," and representations of reading women shaped ideas about women's intellectual abilities, public voices, and domestic roles. The following chapters offer a comparative analysis of women readers in select British and American novels to consider their cultural and political implications. Ultimately, I claim that women readers in the American novel read to establish agency in the service of establishing a national identity, while women readers in the British novel read to establish agency within the domestic sphere with the aim of extending their influence into their immediate community. While anxiety surrounding the "woman reader" straddled the Atlantic, over the long nineteenth-century she developed differently on opposite shores. The following chapters investigate affinities between British and American texts as well divisions resulting from divergent historical and cultural circumstances. My investigation includes the American novels: The Coquette, Hope Leslie, The Wide, Wide World, and Work and British novels: Belinda, Mansfield Park, Villette and The Doctor's Wife, to extrapolate how historical circumstances shaped and were shaped by female literary culture of the period. These novels were chosen because they portray readers at pivotal moments in their respective national histories. To approach how authors construct women readers, I ask such questions as: Who is reading? What are they reading? Why was the novel dangerous? The answers support my argument that political events, women's status, and women's literature are intertwined and impacted by the changing role of the household. When sociopolitical ideologies differ, the elements that "construct" the woman reader change. This is where the value of a transatlantic consideration lies

Using autoethnography to reflect on peer support supervision in an Irish context

Peer Support Workers and Family Peer Support Workers have been in place within an Irish context for a number of years outside statutory services. In 2016, the Mental Health Directorate of the Health Service Executive recruited for a newly established role. These new workers were employed directly into services and had the full privileges of employment, including supervisory and line management structures. Despite the growth of the peer support movement internationally, there has yet to be a clear model of supervision for Peer Support Workers in statutory services. This paper has gathered a variety of experts in peer support in Ireland to begin conversations which will hopefully lead to a clear model of supervision for Peer Support Workers. From the use of an autoethnographic approach four main themes were constructed to gather a complete picture of supervision for Peer Support Workers in Ireland as well as what an ideal model would involve. The paper concludes with recommendations for more research to be conducted in this area so that a clear, workable model of supervision can be created to protect the essence of lived experiences roles in statutory mental health services

Environmental determinants of total IgE among school children living in the rural Tropics: importance of geohelminth infections and effect of anthelmintic treatment

BACKGROUND: The environmental factors that determine the elevated levels of polyclonal IgE observed in populations living in the Tropics are poorly understood but may include geohelminth infections. We investigated the association between geohelminth infections and total IgE levels in school children in rural tropical Ecuador, and assessed the effect on IgE of repeated anthelmintic treatments over a period of 12 months. The study was nested within a cluster-randomized study that randomized 68 schools to receive either 400 mg of albendazole every 2 months over a year or no treatment. We studied random samples of children completing follow-up and representing four groups stratified by the presence of geohelminth infection at baseline and treatment allocation. We measured levels of total IgE and anti-A. lumbricoides IgG (used as a measure of past and current geohelminth infectious exposure) in blood samples collected at the start of the study and after 12 months. RESULTS: We observed elevated levels of total IgE (compared to standard reference values) at the start of the study in this population of school children (geometric mean, 1,004 IU/mL, range 12 to 22,608 IU/mL)) and baseline IgE levels were strongly associated with parameters of geohelminth infection but not with age, nutritional and socioeconomic status. After 12 months, levels of IgE fell significantly in the treatment (by 35.1%) and no treatment (by 10.4%) groups, respectively, but the fall was significantly greater in the treatment group. Falls in IgE were independently associated with albendazole treatment, having a baseline geohelminth infection and with high baseline levels of anti-A. lumbricoides IgG. Increases in IgE at 12 months were associated with the presence of geohelminth infections and increasing levels of anti-A. lumbricoides IgG at 12 months independent of treatment allocation. CONCLUSION: The data provide evidence that geohelminth infections are an important determinant of total IgE in school children in the rural Tropics and that periodic anthelmintic treatments over 12 months are associated with reductions in IgE. The failure of anthelmintic treatment to reduce IgE levels to that considered normal in industrialized countries may be attributed to continued exposure of children to geohelminths or to the effects of infections in early life in programming a long-lasting Th2-biassed immunity

Roomful of Teeth

Roomful of Teeth is a GRAMMY-winning vocal project dedicated to reimagining the expressive potential of the human voice. Through study with masters from vocal traditions the world over, the eight-voice ensemble continually expands its vocabulary of singing techniques and, through an ongoing commissioning process, forges a new repertoire without borders.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/music_programs/1084/thumbnail.jp

An Initial Assessment of a SMAP Soil Moisture Disaggregation Scheme Using TIR Surface Evaporation Data over the Continental United States

The Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission is dedicated toward global soil moisture mapping. Typically, an L-band microwave radiometer has spatial resolution on the order of 36-40 km, which is too coarse for many specific hydro-meteorological and agricultural applications. With the failure of the SMAP active radar within three months of becoming operational, an intermediate (9-km) and finer (3-km) scale soil moisture product solely from the SMAP mission is no longer possible. Therefore, the focus of this study is a disaggregation of the 36-km resolution SMAP passive-only surface soil moisture (SSM) using the Soil Evaporative Efficiency (SEE) approach to spatial scales of 3-km and 9-km. The SEE was computed using thermal-infrared (TIR) estimation of surface evaporation over Continental U.S. (CONUS). The disaggregation results were compared with the 3 months of SMAP-Active (SMAP-A) and Active/Passive (AP) products, while comparisons with SMAP-Enhanced (SMAP-E), SMAP-Passive (SMAP-P), as well as with more than 180 Soil Climate Analysis Network (SCAN) stations across CONUS were performed for a 19 month period. At the 9-km spatial scale, the TIR-Downscaled data correlated strongly with the SMAP-E SSM both spatially (r = 0.90) and temporally (r = 0.87). In comparison with SCAN observations, overall correlations of 0.49 and 0.47; bias of 0.022 and 0.019 and unbiased RMSD of 0.105 and 0.100 were found for SMAP-E and TIR-Downscaled SSM across the Continental U.S., respectively. At 3-km scale, TIR-Downscaled and SMAP-A had a mean temporal correlation of only 0.27. In terms of gain statistics, the highest percentage of SCAN sites with positive gains (>55%) was observed with the TIR-Downscaled SSM at 9-km. Overall, the TIR-based downscaled SSM showed strong correspondence with SMAP-E; compared to SCAN, and overall both SMAP-E and TIR-Downscaled performed similarly, however, gain statistics show that TIR-Downscaled SSM slightly outperformed SMAP-E

Effect of screening for type 2 diabetes on healthcare costs: a register-based study among 139,075 individuals diagnosed with diabetes in Denmark between 2001 and 2009.

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Trials have not demonstrated benefits to the population of screening for type 2 diabetes. However, there may be cost savings for those found to have diabetes. We therefore aimed to compare healthcare costs among individuals with incident type 2 diabetes in a screened group with those in an unscreened group. METHODS: In this register-based, non-randomised controlled trial, eligible individuals were men and women aged 40-69 years without known diabetes who were registered with a general practice in Denmark (n = 1,912,392). Between 2001 and 2006, 153,107 individuals registered with 181 practices participating in the Anglo-Danish-Dutch Study of Intensive Treatment in People with Screen Detected Diabetes in Primary Care (ADDITION)-Denmark study were sent a diabetes risk-score questionnaire. Individuals with a moderate-to-high risk were invited to visit their family doctor for assessment of diabetes status and cardiovascular risk (screening group). The 1,759,285 individuals registered with all other practices in Denmark constituted the retrospectively constructed no-screening (control) group. In this post hoc analysis, we identified individuals from the screening and no-screening groups who were diagnosed with diabetes between 2001 and 2009 (n = 139,075). Using national registry data, we quantified the cost of healthcare services in these two groups between 2001 and 2012. From a healthcare sector perspective, we estimated the potential healthcare cost savings for individuals with diabetes that were attributable to the screening programme. RESULTS: In the screening group, 27,177 of 153,107 individuals (18% of those sent a risk-score questionnaire) attended for screening, 1533 of whom were diagnosed with diabetes. Between 2001 and 2009, 13,992 people were newly diagnosed with diabetes in the screening group (including those diagnosed by screening) and 125,083 in the no-screening group. Healthcare costs were significantly lower in the screening group compared with the no-screening group (difference in mean total annual healthcare costs -€889 per individual with incident diabetes; 95% CI -€1196, -€581). The screening programme was associated with a cost saving per person with incident diabetes over a 5-year period of €2688 (95% CI €1421, €3995). CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: Healthcare costs were lower among individuals with incident type 2 diabetes in the screened group compared with the unscreened group. The relatively modest cost of screening per person discovered to have developed diabetes was offset within 2 years by savings in the healthcare system

Center Director's Discretionary Fund 2005 Annual Report

The FY 2005 CDDF projects were selected from the following spaceport and range technology and science areas: fluid system technologies; spaceport structures and materials; command, control, and monitoring technologies; and biological sciences (including support for environmental stewardship). The FY 2005 CDDF research projects involved development of the following: a) Capacitance-based moisture sensors to optimize plant growth in reduced gravity; b) Commodity-free calibration methods; c) Application of atmospheric plasma glow discharge to alter the surface properties of polymers for improved electrostatic dissipation characteristics; d) A wipe-on, wipe-off chemical process to remove lead oxides found in paint; e) A robust metabolite profiling platform for better understanding the "law" of biological regulation; f) An explanation of the excavation processes that occur when a jet of gas impinges on a bed of sand; g) "Smart coatings" to detect and control corrosion at an early stage to prevent further corrosion h) A model that can produce a reliable diagnosis of the quality of a software product; i) The formulation of advanced materials to meet system safety needs to minimize electrostatic charges, flammability, and radiation exposure; j) A lab-based instrument that uses the electro-optic Pockels effect to make static electric fields visible; k) A passive volatile organic compound (VOC) cartridge to filter, identify, and quantify VOCs flowing into or emanating from plant flight experiments