Hierarchical forest management planning and sustainable forest management in the boreal forest

In keeping with international efforts to encourage sustainable forest management, new legislation, regulations, and certification criteria have been brought into effect across boreal regions of the world in the past decade or less. These initiatives have established hierarchical systems of forest management planning that consider multiple uses of the forest and various aspects of sustainable forest management at different scales. We describe the systems established in Quebec, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia, Russia, Finland, and Sweden. Most jurisdictions employ some form of three-level planning framework, in which strategic, tactical, and operational plans and considerations are presented with successively greater detail and spatial explicitness. However, planning scales and time horizons vary considerably, as does the level of consideration given to biodiversity and social concerns. We examine these systems in the context of sustainable forest management, raising a number of questions to be addressed in future research, adaptive management, and policy reform. In particular, we note (1) a need of new landscape and regional planning tools to evaluate the long-term and large-scale impacts of various land uses and (2) a general lack of responsiveness to global carbon and climate change concerns

Microparticles and Exercise in Clinical Populations

open access journalMicroparticles (MPs) are shed membrane vesicles released from a variety of cell types in response to cellular activation or apoptosis. They are elevated in a wide variety of disease states and have been previously measured to assess both disease activity and severity. However, recent research suggests that they also possess bioeffector functions, including but not limited to promoting coagulation and thrombosis, inducing endothelial dysfunction, increasing pro-inflammatory cytokine release and driving angiogenesis, thereby increasing cardiovascular risk. Current evidence suggests that exercise may reduce both the number and pathophysiological potential of circulating MPs, making them an attractive therapeutic target. However, the existing body of literature is largely comprised of in vitro or animal studies and thus drawing meaningful conclusions with regards to health and disease remains difficult. In this review, we highlight the role of microparticles in disease, comment on the use of exercise and dietary manipulation as a therapeutic strategy, and suggest future research directions that would serve to address some of the limitations present in the research to dat

TGF beta 1 and biglycan, decorin, and fibromodulin metabolism in canine cartilage

AbstractObjective: Small proteoglycans (PGs) may accumulate in late stage osteoarthritis even as aggrecan is lost. It is not clear what role transforming growth factor (TGF) beta has in this accumulation. Our goal was to investigate the ability of TGF beta 1 to modulate the synthesis and accumulation of decorin, biglycan, and fibromodulin in cartilage explants cultured under conditions in which aggrecan synthesis remains relatively constant.Design: Articular cartilage was cultured in the presence or absence of 4ng/ml TGF beta 1 for up to 16 days. Material extracted from cartilage was assayed for 35SO4-large and small PGs and for total endogenous decorin, biglycan and fibromodulin.Results: The synthesis of 35SO4-small PGs increased during the 16 days in culture in response to TGF beta 1, but declined in control cultures. The difference in 35SO4-decorin between TGF beta 1 and control samples reached nine-fold after 16 days, while the difference in total endogenous decorin was less than 1.5-fold. 35SO4-decorin, which was present in TGF beta 1-treated cultures had an identical core protein, but a longer glycosaminoglycan chain than that of decorin in control cultures. No significant differences in endogenous biglycan were detected, but accumulation of fibromodulin in TGF beta 1 explants exceeded fibromodulin in controls, on average, by 3.8-fold. Fibromodulin was present in cartilage in both keratan sulfate- and non-sulfated oligosaccharide-substituted forms.Conclusions: The accumulation of each of the three small PGs was affected to a different extent in response to TGF beta 1. Of the three, fibromodulin content was most rapidly augmented in response to TGF beta 1

Finding co-solvers on Twitter, with a little help from Linked Data

In this paper we propose a method for suggesting potential collaborators for solving innovation challenges online, based on their competence, similarity of interests and social proximity with the user. We rely on Linked Data to derive a measure of semantic relatedness that we use to enrich both user profiles and innovation problems with additional relevant topics, thereby improving the performance of co-solver recommendation. We evaluate this approach against state of the art methods for query enrichment based on the distribution of topics in user profiles, and demonstrate its usefulness in recommending collaborators that are both complementary in competence and compatible with the user. Our experiments are grounded using data from the social networking service Twitter.com

Being observed caused physiological stress leading to poorer face recognition.

Being observed when completing physical and mental tasks alters how successful people are at completing them. This has been explained in terms of evaluation apprehension, drive theory, and due to the effects of stress caused by being observed. In three experiments, we explore how being observed affects participants' ability to recognise faces as it relates to the aforementioned theories - easier face recognition tasks should be completed with more success under observation relative to harder tasks. In Experiment 1, we found that being observed during the learning phase of an old/new recognition paradigm caused participants to be less accurate during the test phase than not being observed. Being observed at test did not affect accuracy. We replicated these findings in an line-up type task in Experiment 2. Finally, in Experiment 3, we assessed whether these effects were due to the difficulty of the task or due to the physiological stress being observed caused. We found that while observation caused physiological stress, it did not relate to accuracy. Moderately difficult tasks (upright unfamiliar face recognition and inverted familiar face recognition) were detrimentally affected by being observed, whereas easy (upright familiar face recognition) and difficult tasks (inverted unfamiliar face recognition) were unaffected by this manipulation. We explain these results in terms of the direct effects being observed has on task performance for moderately difficult tasks and discuss the implications of these results to cognitive psychological experimentation

Multibeam Maser Survey of methanol and excited OH in the Magellanic clouds: new detections and maser abundance estimates

‘The definitive version is available at www.blackwell-synergy.com.’ Copyright Blackwell Publishing DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2966.2008.12888.xPeer reviewe

Integration of genetics into a systems model of electrocardiographic traits using humanCVD BeadChip

<p>Background—Electrocardiographic traits are important, substantially heritable determinants of risk of arrhythmias and sudden cardiac death.</p> <p>Methods and Results—In this study, 3 population-based cohorts (n=10 526) genotyped with the Illumina HumanCVD Beadchip and 4 quantitative electrocardiographic traits (PR interval, QRS axis, QRS duration, and QTc interval) were evaluated for single-nucleotide polymorphism associations. Six gene regions contained single nucleotide polymorphisms associated with these traits at P<10−6, including SCN5A (PR interval and QRS duration), CAV1-CAV2 locus (PR interval), CDKN1A (QRS duration), NOS1AP, KCNH2, and KCNQ1 (QTc interval). Expression quantitative trait loci analyses of top associated single-nucleotide polymorphisms were undertaken in human heart and aortic tissues. NOS1AP, SCN5A, IGFBP3, CYP2C9, and CAV1 showed evidence of differential allelic expression. We modeled the effects of ion channel activity on electrocardiographic parameters, estimating the change in gene expression that would account for our observed associations, thus relating epidemiological observations and expression quantitative trait loci data to a systems model of the ECG.</p> <p>Conclusions—These association results replicate and refine the mapping of previous genome-wide association study findings for electrocardiographic traits, while the expression analysis and modeling approaches offer supporting evidence for a functional role of some of these loci in cardiac excitation/conduction.</p&gt

Thickness Estimation of Epitaxial Graphene on SiC using Attenuation of Substrate Raman Intensity

A simple, non-invasive method using Raman spectroscopy for the estimation of the thickness of graphene layers grown epitaxially on silicon carbide (SiC) is presented, enabling simultaneous determination of thickness, grain size and disorder using the spectra. The attenuation of the substrate Raman signal due to the graphene overlayer is found to be dependent on the graphene film thickness deduced from X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and transmission electron microscopy of the surfaces. We explain this dependence using an absorbing overlayer model. This method can be used for mapping graphene thickness over a region and is capable of estimating thickness of multilayer graphene films beyond that possible by XPS and Auger electron spectroscopy (AES).Comment: 14 pages, 9 figure

Wind turbine blade design review

A detailed review of the current state-of-art for wind turbine blade design is presented, including theoretical maximum efficiency, propulsion, practical efficiency, HAWT blade design, and blade loads. The review provides a complete picture of wind turbine blade design and shows the dominance of modern turbines almost exclusive use of horizontal axis rotors. The aerodynamic design principles for a modern wind turbine blade are detailed, including blade plan shape/quantity, aerofoil selection and optimal attack angles. A detailed review of design loads on wind turbine blades is offered, describing aerodynamic, gravitational, centrifugal, gyroscopic and operational conditions

Predicting the cost of the consequences of a large nuclear accident in the UK

Nuclear accidents have the potential to lead to significant off-site effects that require actions to minimise the radiological impacts on people. Such countermeasures may include sheltering, evacuation, restrictions on the sale of locally-grown food, and long-term relocation of the population amongst others. Countries with nuclear facilities draw up emergency preparedness plans, and put in place such provisions as distributing instructions and iodine prophylaxis to the local population. Their plans are applied in simulated exercises on a regular basis. The costs associated with emergency preparedness and the safety provisions to reduce the likelihood of an accident, and/or mitigate the consequences, are justified on the basis of the health risks and accident costs averted. There is, of course, only limited actual experience to indicate the likely costs so that much of the costing of accidents is based on calculations. This paper reviews the methodologies used, in particular the approach that has been developed in the UK, to appraise the costs of a hypothetical nuclear accident. Results of analysing a hypothetical nuclear accident at a fictitious reactor site within the United Kingdom are discussed in relation to the accidents at Three Mile Island 2, Chernobyl and Fukushima Dai-ichi