Spatial distribution of Chlorpyrifos and Endosulfan in USA coastal waters and the Great Lakes

Between 1994 and 1997, 258 tissue and 178 sediment samples were analyzed for chlorpyrifos throughout the coastal United States and the Great Lakes. Subsequently, 95 of the 1997 tissue samples were reanalyzed for endosulfan. Tissue chlorpyrifos concentrations, which exceeded the 90th percentile, were found in coastal regions known to have high agricultural use rates but also strongly correlated with sites near high population. The highest concentrations of endosulfans in contrast, were generally limited to agricultural regions of the country. Detections of chlorpyrifos at several Alaskan sites suggest an atmospheric transport mechanism. Many Great Lakes sites had chlorpyrifos tissue concentrations above the 90th percentile which decreased with increasing distance from the Corn Belt region (Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin) where most agriculturally applied chlorpyrifos is used. Correlation analysis suggests that fluvial discharge is the primary transport pathway on the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico coasts for chlorpyrifos but not necessarily for endosulfans. (PDF contains 28 pages

The development of a prototype behavioral marker system of US Navy officers of the deck

The article of record as published may be found at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssci.201105.009The officer of the deck (OOD) of a US Navy ship is in charge of the safe and proper operation of the ship, and acountable to the commanding officer for every event that occurs during his or her OOD watch. This paper discusses the development of a prototype behavioral marker system to evaluate, and provide feedback on, the nontechnical (cognitive, social and personal resource) skills of ODDs. An initial set of 17 categories of nontechnical skills were identified from a literature review. A focus group with four qualified OODs used the skills identified from the literature review to develop an initial taxonomy of five categories, each with two or three corresponding behavioral elements. This taxonomy was then used to classify 149 statements concenred with the nontechnical skills of OODs collected from 16 critical incident interviews. After three iterations of adaptations to the taxonomy, two independent raters were able to reach acceptable levels of reliability in using the taxonomy to classify the statements. Although further development work is required, it is suggested that the prototype behavioral marker system has implications for improving safety and performance on military and civilian ships

The Specific Heat of a Ferromagnetic Film.

We analyze the specific heat for the $O(N)$ vector model on a $d$-dimensional film geometry of thickness $L$ using ``environmentally friendly'' renormalization. We consider periodic, Dirichlet and antiperiodic boundary conditions, deriving expressions for the specific heat and an effective specific heat exponent, \alpha\ef. In the case of $d=3$, for $N=1$, by matching to the exact exponent of the two dimensional Ising model we capture the crossover for \xi_L\ra\infty between power law behaviour in the limit {L\over\xi_L}\ra\infty and logarithmic behaviour in the limit {L\over\xi_L}\ra0 for fixed $L$, where $\xi_L$ is the correlation length in the transverse dimensions.Comment: 21 pages of Plain TeX. Postscript figures available upon request from [email protected]

INFLUENCE OF SKIN MOVEMENT ARTEFACTS ON THE CALCULATED KINEMATIC GEOMETRY AND JOINT KINETICS OF THE LOCOMOTOR SYSTEM DURING ACTIVITY

INTRODUCTION: Motion analysis has played an important role in sports and orthopaedic biomechanics. A major source of error in modern skin-marker-based motion analysis systems is skin movement artefacts (Cappozzo et al., 1996). Traditional methods have either failed to reduce effectively skin movement artefacts or simply ignored them in reconstructing movement, resulting in artefactual joint dislocation or inaccurate limb positions, with important consequences on the calculated geometry and joint kinetics of the locomotor musculoskeletal system. The present study addresses these issues