Hicks v. Dowd, Conservation Easements, and the Charitable Trust Doctrine: Setting the Record Straight

This is the fourth in an exchange of articles published by the Wyoming Law Review discussing the application of charitable trust principles to conservation easements conveyed as charitable gifts. In 2002, Johnson County, Wyoming, attempted to terminate a conservation easement that had been conveyed to the County as a tax-deductible charitable gift. The County\u27s actions were challenged, first in a suit brought by a resident of the County, Hicks v. Dowd, and then in a suit brought by the Wyoming Attorney General, Salzburg v. Dowd. The over six years of litigation associated with the easement\u27s attempted termination has been the catalyst and background for the exchange of articles

Hicks v. Dowd, Conservation Easements, and the Charitable Trust Doctrine: Setting the Record Straight

This is the fourth in an exchange of articles published by the Wyoming Law Review discussing the application of charitable trust principles to conservation easements conveyed as charitable gifts. In 2002, Johnson County, Wyoming, attempted to terminate a conservation easement that had been conveyed to the County as a tax-deductible charitable gift. The County\u27s actions were challenged, first in a suit brought by a resident of the County, Hicks v. Dowd, and then in a suit brought by the Wyoming Attorney General, Salzburg v. Dowd. The over six years of litigation associated with the easement\u27s attempted termination has been the catalyst and background for the exchange of articles

On the detection of functionally coherent groups of protein domains with an extension to protein annotation

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Protein domains coordinate to perform multifaceted cellular functions, and domain combinations serve as the functional building blocks of the cell. The available methods to identify functional domain combinations are limited in their scope, e.g. to the identification of combinations falling within individual proteins or within specific regions in a translated genome. Further effort is needed to identify groups of domains that span across two or more proteins and are linked by a cooperative function. Such functional domain combinations can be useful for protein annotation.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using a new computational method, we have identified 114 groups of domains, referred to as domain assembly units (DASSEM units), in the proteome of budding yeast <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</it>. The units participate in many important cellular processes such as transcription regulation, translation initiation, and mRNA splicing. Within the units the domains were found to function in a cooperative manner; and each domain contributed to a different aspect of the unit's overall function. The member domains of DASSEM units were found to be significantly enriched among proteins contained in transcription modules, defined as genes sharing similar expression profiles and presumably similar functions. The observation further confirmed the functional coherence of DASSEM units. The functional linkages of units were found in both functionally characterized and uncharacterized proteins, which enabled the assessment of protein function based on domain composition.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A new computational method was developed to identify groups of domains that are linked by a common function in the proteome of <it>Saccharomyces cerevisiae</it>. These groups can either lie within individual proteins or span across different proteins. We propose that the functional linkages among the domains within the DASSEM units can be used as a non-homology based tool to annotate uncharacterized proteins.</p

Structural parameters for globular clusters in NGC 5128. III. ACS surface-brightness profiles and model fits

We present internal surface-brightness profiles, based on HST/ACS imaging in the F606W bandpass, for 131 globular cluster (GC) candidates with luminosities 10^4 - 3 x 10^6 solar, in the giant elliptical galaxy NGC 5128. Several structural models are fit to the profile of each cluster and combined with mass-to-light ratios from population-synthesis models, to derive a catalogue of fundamental structural and dynamical parameters parallel in form to the catalogues recently produced by McLaughlin & van der Marel and Barmby et al. for GCs and massive young star clusters in Local Group galaxies. As part of this, we provide corrected and extended parameter estimates for another 18 clusters in NGC 5128, which we observed previously. We show that, like GCs in the Milky Way and some of its satellites, the majority of globulars in NGC 5128 are well fit by isotropic Wilson models, which have intrinsically more distended envelope structures than the standard King lowered isothermal spheres. We use our models to predict internal velocity dispersions for every cluster in our sample. These predictions agree well in general with the observed dispersions in a small number of clusters for which spectroscopic data are available. In a subsequent paper, we use these results to investigate scaling relations for GCs in NGC 5128.Comment: MNRAS, in press. 28 pages. Full data tables available at http://www.astro.keele.ac.uk/~dem/clusters.htm

Economic Analysis of Cellulosic Feedstock for Bioenergy in the Texas Rio Grande Valley

Farm Management,

Deterioration of perennial sea ice in the Beaufort Gyre from 2003 to 2012 and its impact on the oceanic freshwater cycle

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 1271-1305, doi:10.1002/2013JC008999.Time series of ice draft from 2003 to 2012 from moored sonar data are used to investigate variability and describe the reduction of the perennial sea ice cover in the Beaufort Gyre (BG), culminating in the extreme minimum in 2012. Negative trends in median ice drafts and most ice fractions are observed, while open water and thinnest ice fractions (<0.3 m) have increased, attesting to the ablation or removal of the older sea ice from the BG over the 9 year period. Monthly anomalies indicate a shift occurred toward thinner ice after 2007, in which the thicker ice evident at the northern stations was reduced. Differences in the ice characteristics between all of the stations also diminished, so that the ice cover throughout the region became statistically homogenous. The moored data are used in a relationship with satellite radiometer data to estimate ice volume changes throughout the BG. Summer solid fresh water content decreased drastically in consecutive years from 730 km3 in 2006 to 570 km3 in 2007, and to 240 km3 in 2008. After a short rebound, solid fresh water fell below 220 km3 in 2012. Meanwhile, hydrographic data indicate that liquid fresh water in the BG in summer increased 5410 km3 from 2003 to 2010 and decreased at least 210 km3 by 2012. The reduction of both solid and liquid fresh water components indicates a net export of approximately 320 km3 of fresh water from the region occurred between 2010 and 2012, suggesting that the anticyclonic atmosphere-ocean circulation has weakened.Support for Krishfield, Proshutinsky, and Timmermans, partial financial support of logistics, hydrographic observations on the board of Canadian icebreaker, and full financial coverage of all mooring instrumentation was provided by the National Science Foundation (under grants OPP-0230184, OPP-0424864, ARC-0722694, ARC-0806306, ARC- 0856531, ARC-1107277, and ARC- 1203720), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution internal funding. Funding for Tateyama was provided by the International Arctic Research Center – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (IJIS) Arctic project, and for Williams, Carmack, and McLaughlin by Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Deterioration of perennial sea ice in the Beaufort Gyre from 2003 to 2012 and its impact on the oceanic freshwater cycle

© The Author(s), 2014. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans 119 (2014): 1271-1305, doi:10.1002/2013JC008999.Time series of ice draft from 2003 to 2012 from moored sonar data are used to investigate variability and describe the reduction of the perennial sea ice cover in the Beaufort Gyre (BG), culminating in the extreme minimum in 2012. Negative trends in median ice drafts and most ice fractions are observed, while open water and thinnest ice fractions (<0.3 m) have increased, attesting to the ablation or removal of the older sea ice from the BG over the 9 year period. Monthly anomalies indicate a shift occurred toward thinner ice after 2007, in which the thicker ice evident at the northern stations was reduced. Differences in the ice characteristics between all of the stations also diminished, so that the ice cover throughout the region became statistically homogenous. The moored data are used in a relationship with satellite radiometer data to estimate ice volume changes throughout the BG. Summer solid fresh water content decreased drastically in consecutive years from 730 km3 in 2006 to 570 km3 in 2007, and to 240 km3 in 2008. After a short rebound, solid fresh water fell below 220 km3 in 2012. Meanwhile, hydrographic data indicate that liquid fresh water in the BG in summer increased 5410 km3 from 2003 to 2010 and decreased at least 210 km3 by 2012. The reduction of both solid and liquid fresh water components indicates a net export of approximately 320 km3 of fresh water from the region occurred between 2010 and 2012, suggesting that the anticyclonic atmosphere-ocean circulation has weakened.Support for Krishfield, Proshutinsky, and Timmermans, partial financial support of logistics, hydrographic observations on the board of Canadian icebreaker, and full financial coverage of all mooring instrumentation was provided by the National Science Foundation (under grants OPP-0230184, OPP-0424864, ARC-0722694, ARC-0806306, ARC- 0856531, ARC-1107277, and ARC- 1203720), and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution internal funding. Funding for Tateyama was provided by the International Arctic Research Center – Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (IJIS) Arctic project, and for Williams, Carmack, and McLaughlin by Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Structural Parameters for Globular Clusters in NGC 5128. II: HST/ACS Imaging and New Clusters

We report the first results from an imaging program with the ACS camera on HST designed to measure the structural characteristics of a wide range of globular clusters in NGC 5128, the nearest giant elliptical galaxy. From 12 ACS/WFC fields, we have measured a total of 62 previously known globular clusters and have discovered 69 new high-probability cluster candidates not found in any previous work. We present magnitudes and color indices for all of these, along with rough measurements of their effective diameters and ellipticities. The luminosity distribution of this nearly-uncontaminated sample of clusters matches well with the normal GCLF for giant elliptical galaxies, and the cluster scale size and ellipticity distributions are similar to those in the Milky Way system. The indication from this survey is that many hundreds of individual clusters remain to be found with carefully designed search techniques in the future. A very rough estimate of the total cluster population from our data suggests N_GC = 1500 in NGC 5128, over all magnitudes and within a projected radius R = 25' from the galaxy center.Comment: AASTex, 33 preprint pages including 9 Figures. Accepted for publication in Astronomical Journal, volume 132 (2006

Chemodynamics of Compact Stellar Systems in NGC 5128: How similar are Globular Clusters, Ultra-Compact Dwarfs, and Dwarf Galaxies?

Velocity dispersion measurements are presented for luminous GCs in NGC 5128 derived from high-res. UVES spectra. The measurements are made with the pPXF code that parametrically recovers line-of-sight velocity dispersions. Combining the measured velocity dispersions with surface photometry and structural parameter data from HST enables both dynamical masses and M/L ratios to be derived. The fundamental plane relations of these clusters are investigated in order to fill the apparent gap between the relations of Local Group GCs and more massive early-type galaxies. It is found that the properties of these massive stellar systems match those of nuclear clusters in dwarf elliptical galaxies and UCDs better than those of Local Group GCs, and that all objects share similarly old (>8 Gyr) ages, suggesting a possible link between the formation and evolution of dE,Ns, UCDs and massive GCs. We find a very steep correlation between dynamical (M/L) ratio and dynamical mass of the form (M/L)_dyn ~ M_dyn^(0.24+/-0.02) above M_dyn = 2x10^6 Msol. Formation scenarios are investigated with a chemical abundance analysis using absorption line strengths calibrated to the Lick/IDS index system. The results lend support to two scenarios contained within a single general formation scheme. Old, massive, super-solar [alpha/Fe] systems are formed on short (<100 Myr) timescales through the merging of single-collapse GCs which themselves are formed within single, giant molecular clouds. More intermediate- and old-aged (~3-10 Gyr), solar- to sub-solar [alpha/Fe] systems are formed on much longer (~Gyr) timescales through the stripping of dE,Ns in the 10^13-10^15 Msol potential wells of massive galaxies and galaxy clusters.Comment: 12 pages (ApJ style) with 11 figures and 7 tables, accepted for publication in Ap