Airborne lidar measurements of El Chichon stratospheric aerosols, January 1984

A lidar-equipped NASA Electra aircraft was flown in January 1984 between the latitude of 38 and 90 deg N. One of the primary purposes of this mission was to determine the spatial distribution and aerosol characteristics of El Chichon produced stratospheric material. Lidar data from that portion of the flight mission between 38 deg N and 77 deg N is presented. Representative profiles of lidar backscatter ratio, a plot of the integral backscattering function versus latitude, and contours of backscatter mixing ratio versus altitude and latitude are given. In addition, tables containing numerical values of the backscatter ratio and backscattering function versus altitude are applied for each profile. These data clearly show that material produced by the El Chichon eruptions of late March-early April 1982 had spread throughout the latitudes covered by this mission, and that the most massive portion of the material resided north of 55 deg N and was concentrated below 17 km in a layer that peaked at 13 to 15 km. In this latitude region, peak backscatter ratios at a wavelength of 0.6943 microns were approximately 3 and the peak integrated backscattering function was about 15 X 10 to the -4/sr corresponding to a peak optical depth of approximately 0.07. This report presents the results of this mission in a ready-to-use format for atmospheric and climatic studies

EVALUATING THE ACADEMIC PREPARATION OF ADDICTION COUNSELORS IN INDIANA FOR PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE

Currently, addiction counseling services are provided by individuals who do not possess degrees in addictions counseling or have had courses in addictions-related content in their academic programs of study. There is recognition that addictions counseling is nonexistent or inconsistent in academic curriculum in higher education. Other allied graduate counseling programs of clinical mental health, social work, and marriage and family therapy have established curricula. The current lack of addiction studies education brings questions of competency of the current and future providers of addictions counseling. As a result, inquiry is needed to examine the current addictions counseling workforce, and their academic preparation to determine what if any courses in addictions counseling were offered in their programs of study. Further, what are the current workforce duties and experiences of addictions counselors? With regard to those duties, what could be learned to incorporate into an academic program and curriculum content? The academic preparation of addiction counselors using a qualitative study was investigated. Participants were currently practicing addictions counselors at Indiana treatment programs. Each one possessed a master‘s degree, and all were grandfathered into an addictions counseling license in Indiana. The participants of this study were interviewed about academic preparation and what correlation the academic preparation had in relevance to current workforce duties and services. Participants also completed a survey related to graduate-level courses and course descriptions in addictions counseling. They endorsed the courses and descriptions with a Likert scale on degree of relevance or nonrelevance related to their workforce duties in addictions counseling. The participants provided perspectives on their self-awareness as addictions counselors and workforce issues. Their contributions provided data that coalesced into themes to be considered for academic and workforce issues to enhance addictions studies and services

A Bacterial Homolog of a Eukaryotic Inositol Phosphate Signaling Enzyme Mediates Cross-kingdom Dialog in the Mammalian Gut

Dietary InsP6 can modulate eukaryotic cell proliferation and has complex nutritive consequences, but its metabolism in the mammalian gastrointestinal tract is poorly understood. Therefore, we performed phylogenetic analyses of the gastrointestinal microbiome in order to search for candidate InsP6 phosphatases. We determined that prominent gut bacteria express homologs of the mammalian InsP6 phosphatase (MINPP) and characterized the enzyme from Bacteroides thetaiotaomicron (BtMinpp). We show that BtMinpp has exceptionally high catalytic activity, which we rationalize on the basis of mutagenesis studies and by determining its crystal structure at 1.9 Å resolution. We demonstrate that BtMinpp is packaged inside outer membrane vesicles (OMVs) protecting the enzyme from degradation by gastrointestinal proteases. Moreover, we uncover an example of cross-kingdom cell-to-cell signaling, showing that the BtMinpp-OMVs interact with intestinal epithelial cells to promote intracellular Ca2+ signaling. Our characterization of BtMinpp offers several directions for understanding how the microbiome serves human gastrointestinal physiology

Position of Insurance Broker in Insurance Market

Import 22/07/2015Abstrakt Jméno studenta: Bc. Klaudia Mičová Název práce: Postavení pojišťovacího makléře na pojistném trhu Práce se zabývá postavením pojišťovacího makléře na pojistném trhu. V teoretické části je vymezena základní charakteristika zprostředkovatelské činnosti, například rozdělení pojišťovacích zprostředkovatelů podle kategorií, registr, formy odměňování atd. Pojišťovací makléř jde zde podrobně popsán od povinností až po etický kodex. V praktické části dochází ke zhodnocení postavení pojišťovacího makléře na pojistném trhu jak ze strany klienta, tak ze strany pojišťovny.This work deals with the position of an insurance broker in the insurance market. In the theoretical part is defined the basic characteristic of brokering activity, such as the division of insurance brokers by category, register, forms of remuneration etc. Insurance Broker is described in detail in terms of obligations to the Code of Ethics. The practical part assesses the status of the insurance broker in the insurance market from both sides - the client and the insurance company.119 - Katedra právavelmi dobř

Hydrodynamic bubble coarsening in off-critical vapour-liquid phase separation

Late-stage coarsening in off-critical vapour-liquid phase separation is re-examined. In the limit of bubbles of vapour distributed throughout a continuous liquid phase, it is argued that coarsening proceeds via inertial hydrodynamic bubble collapse. This replaces the Lifshitz-Slyozov-Wagner mechanism seen in binary liquid mixtures. The arguments are strongly supported by simulations in two dimensions using a novel single-component soft sphere fluid.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, revtex3.

Experimental Evidence of Dioxole Unimolecular Decay Pathway for Isoprene-Derived Criegee Intermediates

Ozonolysis of isoprene, one of the most abundant volatile organic compounds emitted into the Earth’s atmosphere, generates two four-carbon unsaturated Criegee intermediates, methyl vinyl ketone oxide (MVK-oxide) and methacrolein oxide (MACR-oxide). The extended conjugation between the vinyl substituent and carbonyl oxide groups of these Criegee intermediates facilitates rapid electrocyclic ring closures that form five-membered cyclic peroxides, known as dioxoles. This study reports the first experimental evidence of this novel decay pathway, which is predicted to be the dominant atmospheric sink for specific conformational forms of MVK-oxide (anti) and MACR-oxide (syn) with the vinyl substituent adjacent to the terminal O atom. The resulting dioxoles are predicted to undergo rapid unimolecular decay to oxygenated hydrocarbon radical products, including acetyl, vinoxy, formyl, and 2-methylvinoxy radicals. In the presence of O₂, these radicals rapidly react to form peroxy radicals (ROO), which quickly decay via carbon-centered radical intermediates (QOOH) to stable carbonyl products that were identified in this work. The carbonyl products were detected under thermal conditions (298 K, 10 Torr He) using multiplexed photoionization mass spectrometry (MPIMS). The main products (and associated relative abundances) originating from unimolecular decay of anti-MVK-oxide and subsequent reaction with O₂ are formaldehyde (88 ± 5%), ketene (9 ± 1%), and glyoxal (3 ± 1%). Those identified from the unimolecular decay of syn-MACR-oxide and subsequent reaction with O₂ are acetaldehyde (37 ± 7%), vinyl alcohol (9 ± 1%), methylketene (2 ± 1%), and acrolein (52 ± 5%). In addition to the stable carbonyl products, the secondary peroxy chemistry also generates OH or HO₂ radical coproducts