Predicting Mishap Rates at Closing USAF Maintenance Depots

It is clear that the Department of Defense and the USAF, in an effort to cut costs, will continue to reduce infrastructure through base closures. This has particular implications to the civilian employee who will likely lose his or her job. The purpose of this study was to review the most recent literature relating to safety and industrial facility closures and develop a theoretical model for predicting accident or mishap rates. From the literature reviewed, a theoretical model is proposed containing five candidate variables intended to measure; perceived adequacy of employee safety training, perceived safety culture, perceived safety climate, self-reported employee morale, Safety Locus of Control; as well as five candidate indicator variables intended to measure; equipment maintenance levels, company resources allocated for safety, levels of overtime performed, quality or re-works, occurrence of personal site visits by Distinguished Visitors. Potential survey instrument items are provided along with a proposed implementation plan for the five Air Logistic Centers. Prevention of accidents through proactive policies may lead to additional savings through claims cost avoidance. Model validation and item analysis are left as a follow-on effort to this research

Wetland Management Strategies that Maximize Marsh Bird Use in the Midwest

We determined marsh bird use across a wide range of wetland types (e.g., emergent, non-vegetated, riparian), hydrologic regimes (e.g., temporary, seasonal, semi-permanent), management practices (e.g., active, passive, unmanaged), and past disturbance regimes (e.g., natural and restored through Wetlands Reserve Program, impounded and unimpounded) in Illinois during late spring and early summer 2015. Our objectives were to 1) compare marsh bird use of wetland impoundments managed for waterfowl 3 across a continuum of management intensities and strategies to predict how impoundment management actions can increase use by both groups, 2) compare marsh bird use of restored and natural wetlands, and 3) determine characteristics of wetlands and the surrounding landscape that influence marsh bird use of restored wetlands. Additionally, we surveyed marsh birds using the standard protocol timing and methodology on wetlands concurrently surveyed within the Illinois Critical Trends Assessment Program for comparison of methodologies.United States Fish and Wildlife Service Contract Number: F14AP00485unpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

NRCS Wetland Easement Monitoring and Wetland Quality Evaluation Final Report Period: 1 January 2015 – 31 December 2015

During 2015, the Illinois Natural History Survey (INHS) conducted wetland easement monitoring and wetland quality evaluations for the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). In total, 106 wetland easements were monitored within a 28 county area across central Illinois, including 4 Emergency Watershed Protection Program-Floodplain Easements (EWPP-FPE), 14 Emergency Wetland Reserve Program (EWRP) easements, and 88 Wetland Reserve Program (WRP) easements. We acknowledge that wetland easements have recently been re-classified as wetland reserve easements (WRE) within the Agriculture Conservation and Easement Program, but herein we have retained the former nomenclature to maintain consistency with existing management plans and agency documents. Our goal was to visit at least 100 wetland easements in Illinois during 2015, meet with or contact landowners to verify ownership information, identify potential land uses or practices incompatible with program objectives and active authorized practices, and assess general habitat quality for wetland birds. Specifically, we completed an annual monitoring worksheet, conducted a rapid wetland assessment to estimate habitat quality for wetland birds, and provided general information regarding condition of easements.United States Department of Agriculture – Natural Resources Conservation Service Contract Number: 65-5A12-15-351unpublishednot peer reviewedOpe

Impact of aging on immunity in the context of COVID-19, HIV, and tuberculosis

Knowledge of aging biology needs to be expanded due to the continuously growing number of elderly people worldwide. Aging induces changes that affect all systems of the body. The risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer increases with age. In particular, the age-induced adaptation of the immune system causes a greater susceptibility to infections and contributes to the inability to control pathogen growth and immune-mediated tissue damage. Since the impact of aging on immune function, is still to be fully elucidated, this review addresses some of the recent understanding of age-related changes affecting key components of immunity. The emphasis is on immunosenescence and inflammaging that are impacted by common infectious diseases that are characterized by a high mortality, and includes COVID-19, HIV and tuberculosis

A Kaluza-Klein inspired action for chiral p-forms and their anomalies

The dynamics of chiral p-forms can be captured by a lower-dimensional parity-violating action motivated by a Kaluza-Klein reduction on a circle. The massless modes are (p-1)-forms with standard kinetic terms and Chern-Simons couplings to the Kaluza-Klein vector of the background metric. The massive modes are p-forms charged under the Kaluza-Klein vector and admit parity-odd first-order kinetic terms. Gauge invariance is implemented by a Stueckelberg-like mechanism using (p-1)-forms. A Chern-Simons term for the Kaluza-Klein vector is generated at one loop by massive p-form modes. These findings are shown to be consistent with anomalies and supersymmetry for six-dimensional supergravity theories with chiral tensor multiplets.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Contemporary Family Law, 6th Edition

Jessica Dixon Weaver: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6960-1459https://scholar.smu.edu/facbooks/1071/thumbnail.jp

Projected climate change impacts on Indiana’s Energy demand and supply

This paper estimates changes in future energy demand and supply for Indiana due to projected climate change impacts. We first estimate demand changes under both the business-as-usual emissions scenario (RCP 8.5) and a scenario based on reduced emissions consistent with a 2-degree increase in global mean temperature (RCP 4.5), on both a statewide basis and for major urban areas. We then use our adjusted statewide energy demand projections as an input to a comprehensive model of Indiana’s energy system, to project expected changes in the state’s energy supply under both scenarios. Finally, we consider the potential impacts of two policy scenarios—a carbon pricing scheme and a renewable energy investment tax credit—on emissions and future energy supply choices. Our results suggest that climate change will have a relatively modest effect on energy demand and supply in Indiana, slightly increasing commercial demand and decreasing residential demand but having little effect on energy supply choices. In addition, our results suggest the potential for policy proposals currently being adopted in other states, such as a relatively small carbon price or investment credits for renewable energy sources, to have a larger impact on the state’s future energy mix, increasing production from low or zero carbon energy sources and reducing emissions

Genome sequences of three hpAfrica2 strains of Helicobacter pylori

We present the genome sequences of three hpAfrica2 strains of Helicobacter pylori, which are postulated to have evolved in isolation for many millennia in people of San ethnicity. Although previously considered to be ancestral to Helicobacter acinonychis, the hpAfrica2 strains differ markedly from H. acinonychis in their gene arrangement. These data provide new insights into Helicobacter evolution

Climate Change and Indiana’s Energy Sector: A Report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment

Indiana’s climate and its manufacturing-heavy economy make it a prime user of energy. In fact, Indiana is the ninth-most energy intensive state per capita in the country. Nearly three-quarters of Indiana’s electricity comes from coal, and 5 percent is generated by renewable sources, though the wind energy sector is growing and coal use is declining. This energy mix makes the Hoosier State the eighth-largest emitter of climate-changing gases, at 183 million metric tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted per year. As global and local climates continue to shift, it is important to know how Indiana’s future energy profile will be affected and what those changes mean for Hoosier families and businesses. This report from the Indiana Climate Change Impacts Assessment (IN CCIA) looks at projected changes to Indiana’s residential and commercial energy demands as the state warms, and to Indiana’s energy supply over the coming century

Covariant Action for a D=11 Five-Brane with the Chiral Field

We propose a complete Born-Infeld-like action for a bosonic 5-brane with the worldvolume chiral field in a background of gravitational and antisymmetric gauge fields of D=11 supergravity. When the five-brane couples to a three-rank antisymmetric gauge field local worldvolume symmetries of the five-brane require the addition to the action of an appropriate Wess-Zumino term. To preserve general coordinate and Lorentz invariance of the model we introduce a single auxiliary scalar field. The auxiliary field can be eliminated by gauge fixing a corresponding local symmetry at the price of the loss of manifest d=6 worldvolume covariance. The double dimensional reduction of the five-brane model results in the Born-Infeld action with the Wess-Zumino term for a D=10 four-D-brane.Comment: LaTeX file, 10 pages, the form of eq. (8) corrected, a Comment added, version to appear in Phys. Lett.