‘HANGING TEN’: MEASURING BIG WAVE INTENSITIES

The entire world is still feeling the effects of the devastating 2011 Honshu earthquake and tsunami. The Cascadia subduction zone, spanning over 800 miles from Vancouver Island to northern California, is soon expected to complete its 500-year quake cycle with a magnitude 8+ tsunamigenic earthquake. Much attention is being given to planning for this potential disaster and its collateral impacts from landslides, fires, hazardous material spills and infrastructure damages. The devastating impact of future tsunami events in this region and elsewhere, may result in millions of deaths and billions of dollars in damages. Over the years numerous attempts have been made to quantify tsunami severity but none of the devised scales have been completely satisfactory. The present study reviews and discusses the scales of magnitude and intensity that have been developed to describe the severity of tsunami events both qualitatively and quantitatively. Furthermore, it defines a new quantitative scaling measure of tsunami severity which is an improvement over widely reported current scales, by comparing the ‘Top Ten Lists’ of devastating tsunami as calculated by each of the scales

A study in nondecision: the Human Rights Commission in Huntington

Civil Rights was one of the most explosive political issues of the 1960’s. Race relations was a concern to everyone, and a special concern to government at all levels and in all parts of the United States. This paper will show how Huntington, West Virginia, a medium-sized border city with a small minority population, faced the problem. In 1962, the Mayor established a Civil Rights Commission which served to insulate the City Council--the political decision-makers—from facing and resolving the problems of the Negro minority. Politics is understood here as the distribution of advantages and disadvantages among people. Individuals differ in their ability to influence the political system so that these advantages are distributed unequally, and there is conflict concerning the allocation of resources. One way influence can be used by those advantaged in the system is by preventing decisional questions from arising or to restrict the domain of decision choices to those acceptable to the advantaged

Elinor Wylie; a biographical and critical study

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Boston Universit

Equative and Predicational Copulas in Thai

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt:In this paper we report on an experimental study of the copula system in Thai. We argue that the Thai copula system is crucial to the debate over whether specifica-tional sentences should be given an inverse predicational analysis or an equative analysis. We conclude that Thai data supports the equative approach. The paper is organized as follows. We first introduce the inverse and equative analyses, and provide a little background on Thai. We then discuss our sentence acceptability task survey, and introduce the idea that the test items in the survey may have been subject to type-shifting. After that, we describe some interviews we did with Thai speakers aimed at fixing the semantic types of the test items. Finally, we discuss the results of the interviews and conclude

The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment—A Plan for Integrated, Large Fire–Atmosphere Field Campaigns

The Fire and Smoke Model Evaluation Experiment (FASMEE) is designed to collect integrated observations from large wildland fires and provide evaluation datasets for new models and operational systems. Wildland fire, smoke dispersion, and atmospheric chemistry models have become more sophisticated, and next-generation operational models will require evaluation datasets that are coordinated and comprehensive for their evaluation and advancement. Integrated measurements are required, including ground-based observations of fuels and fire behavior, estimates of fire-emitted heat and emissions fluxes, and observations of near-source micrometeorology, plume properties, smoke dispersion, and atmospheric chemistry. To address these requirements the FASMEE campaign design includes a study plan to guide the suite of required measurements in forested sites representative of many prescribed burning programs in the southeastern United States and increasingly common high-intensity fires in the western United States. Here we provide an overview of the proposed experiment and recommendations for key measurements. The FASMEE study provides a template for additional large-scale experimental campaigns to advance fire science and operational fire and smoke models

Allosteric Regulation of DNA Cleavage and Sequence-Specificity through Run-On Oligomerization

SummarySgrAI is a sequence specific DNA endonuclease that functions through an unusual enzymatic mechanism that is allosterically activated 200- to 500-fold by effector DNA, with a concomitant expansion of its DNA sequence specificity. Using single-particle transmission electron microscopy to reconstruct distinct populations of SgrAI oligomers, we show that in the presence of allosteric, activating DNA, the enzyme forms regular, repeating helical structures characterized by the addition of DNA-binding dimeric SgrAI subunits in a run-on manner. We also present the structure of oligomeric SgrAI at 8.6 Å resolution, demonstrating the conformational state of SgrAI in its activated form. Activated and oligomeric SgrAI displays key protein-protein interactions near the helix axis between its N termini, as well as allosteric protein-DNA interactions that are required for enzymatic activation. The hybrid approach reveals an unusual mechanism of enzyme activation that explains SgrAI’s oligomerization and allosteric behavior

Evaluation of Coach-Based Technical Assistance: An Evolving Focus on Coachability and Goal Setting

In 2013, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture supported the creation of a professional development and technical assistance center to promote strong implementation and evaluation of University-led, community-based projects serving low-resource populations. Within this center, a coaching cadre was established to provide proactive and responsive technical assistance. Formative evaluation involving coaches and their primary contacts was used for refinement of coaching practices. Initially, coaches were encouraged to build strong interpersonal rapport. This set the stage for trusting, reciprocal interactions, but coaches recognized a need for targeted support and more tools for quality programming, evaluation, and sustainability. Greater emphasis was placed on goal-focused collaboration. Coaches received training and resources on topics such as goal setting, program quality, reduction of barriers (e.g., participant recruitment), and sustainability strategies. To assess coaching model enhancements, a survey of projects was expanded to gauge logic model usage, goal setting, strength of coaching relationships, and project implementation and sustainability progress. Overall, coaching was rated more favorably and effective when contact was consistent, inclusive of face-to-face interaction, met technical needs, and involved collaborative brainstorming and planning. Findings indicate coaching relationships strengthen over time and demand a collaborative, action-orientation to set goals, reduce barriers, and drive stronger outcomes

What do evidence-based secondary journals tell us about the publication of clinically important articles in primary healthcare journals?

BACKGROUND: We conducted this analysis to determine i) which journals publish high-quality, clinically relevant studies in internal medicine, general/family practice, general practice nursing, and mental health; and ii) the proportion of clinically relevant articles in each journal. METHODS: We performed an analytic survey of a hand search of 170 general medicine, general healthcare, and specialty journals for 2000. Research staff assessed individual articles by using explicit criteria for scientific merit for healthcare application. Practitioners assessed the clinical importance of these articles. Outcome measures were the number of high-quality, clinically relevant studies published in the 170 journal titles and how many of these were published in each of four discipline-specific, secondary "evidence-based" journals (ACP Journal Club for internal medicine and its subspecialties; Evidence-Based Medicine for general/family practice; Evidence-Based Nursing for general practice nursing; and Evidence-Based Mental Health for all aspects of mental health). Original studies and review articles were classified for purpose: therapy and prevention, screening and diagnosis, prognosis, etiology and harm, economics and cost, clinical prediction guides, and qualitative studies. RESULTS: We evaluated 60,352 articles from 170 journal titles. The pass criteria of high-quality methods and clinically relevant material were met by 3059 original articles and 1073 review articles. For ACP Journal Club (internal medicine), four titles supplied 56.5% of the articles and 27 titles supplied the other 43.5%. For Evidence-Based Medicine (general/family practice), five titles supplied 50.7% of the articles and 40 titles supplied the remaining 49.3%. For Evidence-Based Nursing (general practice nursing), seven titles supplied 51.0% of the articles and 34 additional titles supplied 49.0%. For Evidence-Based Mental Health (mental health), nine titles supplied 53.2% of the articles and 34 additional titles supplied 46.8%. For the disciplines of internal medicine, general/family practice, and mental health (but not general practice nursing), the number of clinically important articles was correlated withScience Citation Index (SCI) Impact Factors. CONCLUSIONS: Although many clinical journals publish high-quality, clinically relevant and important original studies and systematic reviews, the articles for each discipline studied were concentrated in a small subset of journals. This subset varied according to healthcare discipline; however, many of the important articles for all disciplines in this study were published in broad-based healthcare journals rather than subspecialty or discipline-specific journals