The York River Railroad : 1851-1881

The construction of railroads in the State of Virginia was perhaps the single most important economic development that affected the growth of the state. Connecting isolated sections of the state, railroads enabled rural and urban areas to share their respective contributions to the economic prosperity of the common-wealth. Beginning in 1836, when Virginia\u27s first line was constructed, Virginia railroading developed rapidly from 676 3/4 miles in 1851 to 1,954 miles in 1880. One of the lines that contributed to this economic development was a short thirty-eight mile track that ran from Richmond to West Point at the head of the York River. Constructed to provide an eastern terminus for storing and shipping products and transporting passengers, the line opened in the fall of 1860. Connections were immediately established with Baltimore by steamers, and the company hoped to soon expand the railroad\u27s route

E-Learning to Improve Intercultural Communication

Electronic learning, or e-learning, is becoming an increasingly common way to educate and train individuals. However, along with the benefits of e-learning there are some challenges. This study investigates the use of VoIP technology, as an e-learning system, for U.S. and Taiwanese students to improve their intercultural communication competency. The subjects worked together one-on-one using Skype to communicate. The findings from this experience suggest that VoIP technology provides a good fit for one-on-one e-learning in addressing an intercultural communication task. Students were able to successfully teach and learn from one another, regarding more than just the language

KEY FACTORS INCREASING THE TRUST AND INTENTION TO ADOPT STANDARD CLOUD-BASED APPLICATIONS

A generic standard cloud-based application such as Google Docs are generally among the first to be considered for adoption by end-users. Thus, it is worthy to examine what factors influence trust and the intention of continuing use for such a cloud-based application. Unlike traditional, on-premise applications, familiarity is not an issue for trusting generic, simple cloud-based applications. Moreover, perceived risk is low enough that it has negative, as opposed to the usual positive, impact on trust and the intention of continuing use. The results of this study also imply that the agile adoption of standard cloud-based applications needs to consider factors, including perceived privacy control, system quality, and user satisfaction because these factors can increase the trust of users. Theoretical and practical implications were drawn from the findings of this study

SEAM2011 Spacing Movements Inside Out

SEAM2011-Spacing Movements Outside, curated by Benedict Anderson and Margie Medlin, was a three week event that explored contemporary discourses in performance and design. It involved 45 participants in workshops delivered by international practitioners in the field, and also included public events, artist talks and an International 3 day Symposium of performative presentations and papers on a series of themes affecting and effecting choreography, dance, performance, visual art. The aim was to explore the way interdisciplinary practices can produce new understandings of stage spaces as potential places for new concepts in performance and audience engagement. The specific focus on performative presentation aimed to bring the experience and presence of the body to the core of making and thinking. The event was built around four themes - each open to multiple responses, and nevertheless conjectural analogies of the city, of materiality, of design and of the body: The activated body - new performative spaces; The city performed - trajectories, traces, topographies; The temporal, transitional and transformational - momentum, light, pulse; and Materials performed through the body, the body performed through materials: The Symposium was financed and supported by Critical Path, Interarts Program, Australia Council for the Arts, Arts NSW, University of Technology Sydney and Performance Space

Development of a qPCR assay to detect and quantify ichthyotoxic flagellates along the Norwegian coast, and the first Norwegian record of Fibrocapsa japonica (Raphidophyceae)

Blooms of ichthyotoxic microalgae pose a great challenge to the aquaculture industry world-wide, and there is a need for fast and specific methods for their detection and quantification in monitoring programs. In this study, quantitative real-time PCR (qPCR) assays for the detection and enumeration of three ichthyotoxic flagellates: the dinoflagellate Karenia mikimotoi (Miyake & Kominami ex Oda) Hansen & Moestrup and the two raphidophytes Heterosigma akashiwo (Hada) Hada ex Hara & Chihara and Fibrocapsa japonica Toriumi & Takano were developed. Further, a previously published qPCR assay for the dinoflagellate Karlodinium veneficum (Ballantine) Larsen was used. Monthly samples collected for three years (Aug 2009–Jun 2012) in outer Oslofjorden, Norway were analysed, and the results compared with light microscopy cell counts. The results indicate a higher sensitivity and a lower detection limit (down to 1 cell L−1) for both qPCR assays. Qualitative and semi-quantitative results were further compared with those obtained by environmental 454 high throughput sequencing (HTS, metabarcoding) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) examination from the same samplings. All four species were detected by qPCR and HTS and/or SEM in outer Oslofjorden (Aug 2009–Jun 2012); Karlodinium veneficum was present year-round, whereas Karenia mikimotoi, Heterosigma akashiwo and Fibrocapsa japonica appeared mainly during the autumn in all three years. This is the first observation of Fibrocapsa japonica in Norwegian coastal waters. This species has previously been recorded off the Swedish west coast and German Bight, which may suggest a northward dispersal

Responses of Bats to Forest Fragmentation in the Mississippi River Alluvial Valley, Arkansas, USA

Intense conversion of bottomland hardwood forests to rice and soybeans in the Mississippi River Valley of Arkansas has restricted the remaining forest to isolated fragments. Habitat fragmentation has proven to be detrimental to population sustainability of several species, and is the subject of intense study with often species and latitude specific responses. We compared both coarse land area classes and landscape fragmentation metrics from six 30 km × 30 km subsets centered on publicly owned management areas to bat captures obtained from a 2005 population study. Patch density was the strongest predictor of total captures (R 2 = 0.801, p = 0.016) and of Myotis austroriparius captures (R 2 = 0.856, p = 0.008). Our findings indicate that patch density and area are important predictors of bottomland bat captures

The Impacts of Microphysics and Planetary Boundary Layer Physics on Model Simulations of U. S. Deep South Summer Convection

Inspection of output from various configurations of high-resolution, explicit convection forecast models such as the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model indicates significant sensitivity to the choices of model physics parameterizations employed. Some of the largest apparent sensitivities are related to the specifications of the cloud microphysics and planetary boundary layer physics packages. In addition, these sensitivities appear to be especially pronounced for the weakly-sheared, multicell modes of deep convection characteristic of the Deep South of the United States during the boreal summer. Possible ocean-land sensitivities also argue for further examination of the impacts of using unique ocean-land surface initialization datasets provided by the NASA Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT Center to select NOAA/NWS weather forecast offices. To obtain better quantitative understanding of these sensitivities and also to determine the utility of the ocean-land initialization data, we have executed matrices of regional WRF forecasts for selected convective events near Mobile, AL (MOB), and Houston, TX (HGX). The matrices consist of identically initialized WRF 24-h forecasts using any of eight microphysics choices and any of three planetary boundary layer choices. The resulting 24 simulations performed for each event within either the MOB or HGX regions are then compared to identify the sensitivities of various convective storm metrics to the physics choices. Particular emphasis is placed on sensitivities of precipitation timing, intensity, and coverage, as well as amount and coverage of lightning activity diagnosed from storm kinematics and graupel in the mixed phase layer. The results confirm impressions gleaned from study of the behavior of variously configured WRF runs contained in the ensembles produced each spring at the Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms, but with the benefit of more straightforward control of the physics package choices. The design of the experiments thus allows for more direct interpretation of the sensitivities to each possible physics combination. The results should assist forecasters in their efforts to anticipate and correct for possible biases in simulated WRF convection patterns, and help the modeling community refine their model parameterizations

Solid deuterium surface degradation at ultracold neutron sources

Solid deuterium (sD_2) is used as an efficient converter to produce ultracold neutrons (UCN). It is known that the sD_2 must be sufficiently cold, of high purity and mostly in its ortho-state in order to guarantee long lifetimes of UCN in the solid from which they are extracted into vacuum. Also the UCN transparency of the bulk sD_2 material must be high because crystal inhomogeneities limit the mean free path for elastic scattering and reduce the extraction efficiency. Observations at the UCN sources at Paul Scherrer Institute and at Los Alamos National Laboratory consistently show a decrease of the UCN yield with time of operation after initial preparation or later treatment (`conditioning') of the sD_2. We show that, in addition to the quality of the bulk sD_2, the quality of its surface is essential. Our observations and simulations support the view that the surface is deteriorating due to a build-up of D_2 frost-layers under pulsed operation which leads to strong albedo reflections of UCN and subsequent loss. We report results of UCN yield measurements, temperature and pressure behavior of deuterium during source operation and conditioning, and UCN transport simulations. This, together with optical observations of sD_2 frost formation on initially transparent sD_2 in offline studies with pulsed heat input at the North Carolina State University UCN source results in a consistent description of the UCN yield decrease.Comment: 15 pages, 22 figures, accepted by EPJ-