Key to the Wood-Decaying Polyporaceae of the East Texas Region

The family includes those pore fungi whose fruiting bodies are tough, leathery or woody and whose pore layer usually cannot be separated easily from the context. The pores on the undersurface are only exterior openings of tubes bearing spores and in each species these tube mouths, or pores, are a definite shape and size. Occasionally pore walls will break up giving the appearance of teeth or gills. Fruiting bodies can be sessile, stemmed, effused-reflexed or resupinate (Fig . 2). Members of the family can be either perennial or annual, with the annual species growing during the summer and maturing that fall. All are typically wood-inhabiting, only rarely terrestrial. No other family of comparable size is more important economically than the Polyporaceae, causing 90 percent of the more important timber decays in the United States (Overholts 1967). Decay caused by the Polyporaceae can affect any part of the tree.https://scholarworks.sfasu.edu/ebooks/1007/thumbnail.jp

Understanding social media and sound: music, meaning and membership, the case of SoundCloud

Social media technologies have meant that people’s mu- sic consumption and production practices have rapidly changed and evolved. In this paper, we start to explore and present some of our initial findings in respect to this growing area of research by focusing upon the audio distribution platform SoundCloud. Technologies such as SoundCloud are enabling music producers and consumers a whole range of different ways in which they can engage, give/get feedback, promote, share, acquire, tag and make meaning of music. In this respect we are able to observe the role that such systems play in respect to: workflows and metadata production. The work also speaks about music consumption and production; as an individual and part of the crowd. We envisage that this paper will both provide a platform for future research and offer some insights into this world

Understanding social media and sound: music, meaning and membership, the case of SoundCloud

Social media technologies have meant that people’s mu- sic consumption and production practices have rapidly changed and evolved. In this paper, we start to explore and present some of our initial findings in respect to this growing area of research by focusing upon the audio distribution platform SoundCloud. Technologies such as SoundCloud are enabling music producers and consumers a whole range of different ways in which they can engage, give/get feedback, promote, share, acquire, tag and make meaning of music. In this respect we are able to observe the role that such systems play in respect to: workflows and metadata production. The work also speaks about music consumption and production; as an individual and part of the crowd. We envisage that this paper will both provide a platform for future research and offer some insights into this world

Appalachian Coalfield Delegation Position Paper on Sustainable Energy

Appalachian grassroots groups(with support provided by the DataCenter) release a scathing report on the impact of coal mining to the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development. The Delegation created an historic moment with its powerful stories and diverse outreach. Alliances were forged and the civil society discourse on energy, particularly what is sustainable energy and who gets to define it, has been challenged. Their answer---"it comes from the people!" As most government officials continue to ignore the atrocities of mountain top removal, coal sludge impoundments, and underground injections of sludge, it is up to the people of the Appalachian coal fields to let the world know the harsh realities of an economy built on seemingly cheap electricity

An investigation into the practical application of residential energy certificates

The Energy Performance of Buildings Directive (EPBD) 2002/91/EC introduced various obligatory requirements intended to achieve the reduction of use of energy resources in buildings and consequentially the reduction of the impact of energy use in buildings. Article 7 of the directive formally specified the current European requirement for the energy certification of buildings. In order to implement this requirement, a general framework for establishing a methodology of calculation of the total energy performance of buildings became necessary. The Maltese methodology for the issuance of energy performance certificates for residential property was developed and introduced by the Ministry of Resources and Rural Affairs in 2010. This methodology differs from that of most other European countries since the energy used for cooling in summer is taken into consideration when carrying out the calculation. Most states only consider the energy for heating in winter for residential energy certificates. A study of the results produced by the Maltese certification process is being used to identify whether the methodology implemented is an accurate tool for environmental monitoring of energy use in Maltese residential property. The analysis is utilised to establish a benchmark for energy use in different residential property typologies. This analysis is developed further to highlight the strengths and weaknesses of the certification procedure as a design tool, and to understand whether the procedure can be effectively applied in the cost optimisation of residential construction or refurbishment projects.peer-reviewe

GeoTracks: adaptive music for everyday journeys

Listening to music on the move is an everyday activity for many people. This paper proposes geotracks and geolists, music tracks and playlists of existing music that are aligned and adapted to specific journeys. We describe how everyday walking journeys such as commutes to work and existing popular music tracks can each be analysed, decomposed and then brought together, using musical adaptations including skipping and repeating parts of tracks, dynamically remixing tracks and cross-fades. Using a naturalistic experiment we compared walking while listening to geotracks (dynamically adapted using GPS location information) to walking while listening to a fixed playlist. Overall, participants enjoyed the walk more when listening to the adaptive geotracks. However adapting the lengths of tracks appeared to detract from the experience of the music in some situations and for some participants, revealing trade-offs in achieving fine-grained alignment of music and walking journeys

Long-term impact of sewage sludge application on soil microbial biomass: An evaluation using meta-analysis

The Long-Term Sludge Experiments (LTSE) began in 1994 as part of continuing research into the effects of sludge-borne heavy metals on soil fertility. The long-term effects of Zn, Cu, and Cd on soil microbial biomass carbon (Cmic) were monitored for 8 years (1997-2005) in sludge amended soils at nine UK field sites. To assess the statutory limits set by the UK Sludge (Use in Agriculture) Regulations the experimental data has been reviewed using the statistical methods of meta-analysis. Previous LTSE studies have focused predominantly on statistical significance rather than effect size, whereas meta-analysis focuses on the magnitude and direction of an effect, i.e. the practical significance, rather than its statistical significance. The results presented here show that significant decreases in Cmic have occurred in soils where the total concentrations of Zn and Cu fall below the current UK statutory limits. For soils receiving sewage sludge predominantly contaminated with Zn, decreases of approximately 7–11% were observed at concentrations below the UK statutory limit. The effect of Zn appeared to increase over time, with increasingly greater decreases in Cmic observed over a period of 8 years. This may be due to an interactive effect between Zn and confounding Cu contamination which has augmented the bioavailability of these metals over time. Similar decreases (7–12%) in Cmic were observed in soils receiving sewage sludge predominantly contaminated with Cu; however, Cmic appeared to show of recovery after a period of 6 years. Application of sewage sludge predominantly contaminated with Cd appeared to have no effect on Cmic at concentrations below the current UK statutory limit

The User Experience of Mobile Music Making: An Ethnographic Exploration of Music Production and Performance in Practice

The research herein describes the investigation of usability of software and hardware tools for musicians. Through an ethnographic approach, the aim is to broaden the scope of investigation and measure the usability of tools for musicians in a real world setting. Six musicians are observed through the planning and preparation stages, rehearsals, performing and post-performance in order to better understand the tools that they use and how these tools could be improved. This work builds on previous investigations into more traditional production environments. This investigation also explores how requirements and tools have changed. The research highlights main areas of usability problems in navigation, clarity of expression, problems in understanding flow and a mismatch between requirements and software tools that currently exist. The results highlight strengths in the flexibility of such systems and identify where they solve traditional, hardware based problems. The paper culminates in a discussion regarding the values, strengths and weaknesses of hard and soft tools and points to potential future directions of research

Making music together: an exploration of amateur and pro-am Grime music production

This novel research presents the results of an ethnographic study, which focused upon the production of an EP created by an amateur and a pro-amateur producer. The research presents their production practices across the production workflow, from inception and ideation through to completion. The paper describes the distinct processes that occur when collaborating on the production of the EP. The exploration here discusses the use of software systems to facilitate production of a series of music tracks. We further explicate the use of technologies in the production settings, and these range from mobile devices (smartphones) through to digital audio workstations. Further to this, we start to map out how the technology used affords and supports collaboration and communication across a distributed context. We respond to our findings by presenting a series of design implications that address the research