A Proposal to Create the Buffalo Green Land Bank

For many years the city of Buffalo has had far more housing units than households. Buffalo has experienced a precipitous population decline over the past fifty years. From 580,000 in 1950, Buffalo residents declined to 462,000 by 1970. In 2006, the population had dropped to 276,059. This flight from the city, a product of both suburbanization and the decline of the Rust Belt, has resulted in numerous vacant properties. With a weak housing market and continued population decline, the surplus of housing infrastructure will persist. Many of Buffalo’s policymakers, citizens, and nonprofit organizations have recognized the need to repair the urban fabric by attracting more people back to the core communities and decreasing the surplus housing stock and infrastructure. While potential solutions abound, the City has not formed a comprehensive plan to incorporate these disparate actors

Chemical Impacts of the Microbiome Across Scales Reveal Novel Conjugated Bile Acids

A mosaic of cross-phyla chemical interactions occurs between all metazoans and their microbiomes. In humans, the gut harbors the heaviest microbial load, but many organs, particularly those with a mucosal surface, associate with highly adapted and evolved microbial consortia. The microbial residents within these organ systems are increasingly well characterized, yielding a good understanding of human microbiome composition, but we have yet to elucidate the full chemical impact the microbiome exerts on an animal and the breadth of the chemical diversity it contributes. A number of molecular families are known to be shaped by the microbiome including short-chain fatty acids, indoles, aromatic amino acid metabolites, complex polysaccharides, and host lipids; such as sphingolipids and bile acids. These metabolites profoundly affect host physiology and are being explored for their roles in both health and disease. Considering the diversity of the human microbiome, numbering over 40,000 operational taxonomic units, a plethora of molecular diversity remains to be discovered. Here, we use unique mass spectrometry informatics approaches and data mapping onto a murine 3D-model to provide an untargeted assessment of the chemical diversity between germ-free (GF) and colonized mice (specific-pathogen free, SPF), and report the finding of novel bile acids produced by the microbiome in both mice and humans that have evaded characterization despite 170 years of research on bile acid chemistry

Growing Vegetables Without Irrigation. More locally grown food in semi-arid regions is possible

There is a growing conflict between cities and agriculture for fresh water. To learn what we can grow without irrigation in semi-arid regions, and to demonstrate the potential of a more local food production, I have been experimenting with dry land storage vegetables (potatoes, winter squash and onions) on our organic farm in North Central Montana in the Northern Great Plains of North America

Alleviating a form of electric vehicle range anxiety through On-Demand vehicle access

On-demand vehicle access is a method that can be used to reduce types of range anxiety problems related to planned travel for electric vehicle owners. Using ideas from elementary queueing theory, basic QoS metrics are defined to dimension a shared fleet to ensure high levels of vehicle access. Using mobility data from Ireland, it is argued that the potential cost of such a system is very low

Finite-element reentry heat-transfer analysis of space shuttle Orbiter

A structural performance and resizing (SPAR) finite-element thermal analysis computer program was used in the heat-transfer analysis of the space shuttle orbiter subjected to reentry aerodynamic heating. Three wing cross sections and one midfuselage cross section were selected for the thermal analysis. The predicted thermal protection system temperatures were found to agree well with flight-measured temperatures. The calculated aluminum structural temperatures also agreed reasonably well with the flight data from reentry to touchdown. The effects of internal radiation and of internal convection were found to be significant. The SPAR finite-element solutions agreed reasonably well with those obtained from the conventional finite-difference method