Bottom-up grassroots innovation in transport: motivations, barriers and enablers

There is a growing phenomenon of ‘grassroots’ innovation, i.e. that triggered by individual users or communities (physical or virtual) seeking a solution to a personal or societal problem. This has great potential as a new source of sustainable transport innovations, but has been received little attention to date. This study conducted 16 in-depth interviews and a workshop with grassroots innovators in transport. A detailed thematic analysis of the interview data identified: catalysts for the idea and the motivation behind its pursuit; the barriers experienced (those that were overcome and those that were not); and the enablers that permitted the innovations to continue and to flourish. The paper concludes by identifying the conditions that need to exist for such innovations to be created, developed and exploited in order that their potential for increasing the sustainability of the transport system can be fulfilled

Measures of Success: A Snapshot of the Montana Wolf Program in 2009

Montana’s gray wolf (Canis lupus) population continues to be secure, while the political and legal environments remain dynamic. Wolf delisting is a two-step process. Biological recovery criteria must be met and clearly demonstrated, along with an adequate regulatory framework. Secondly, the delisting decision must be upheld during inevitable legal challenges. The northern Rockies wolf population has met or exceeded numeric and connectivity requirements for many years. The northern Rockies gray wolf population was initially delisted in 2008, but a legal challenge reinstated federal legal protections under the Endangered Species Act mid-summer. By the end of 2008, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks estimated a minimum of 497 wolves in 84 verified packs, 34 of which met the definition of breeding pair. Federal delisting efforts resumed early in 2009 and took effect throughout Montana on 4 May. The second delisting decision was challenged again in Federal Court, although a preliminary injunction request to reinstate federal protections was denied in September. With delisting in Montana, the wolf was automatically reclassified as a species in need of management. Montana’s laws, administrative rules, and management plan also took effect. Montana Tribes lead wolf management activities on their respective reservations. The first fair chase wolf hunting season in Montana occurred in 2009. Seventy-two wolves were harvested through a quota-based framework. Wolves and their management continue to be controversial to a diversity of publics for a wide variety of reasons. Nonetheless, Montana’s wolf program has a solid regulatory foundation and the population is biologically sound. This presentation will provide an update on a variety of topics

Hydrogen from ethanol reforming with aqueous fraction of pine pyrolysis oil with and without chemical looping

Reforming ethanol (‘EtOH’) into hydrogen rich syngas using the aqueous fraction from pine bio-oil (‘AQ’) as a combined source of steam and supplementary organic feed was tested in packed bed with Ni-catalysts ‘A’ (18 wt%/-Al2O3) and ‘B’ (25 wt%/-Al2O3). The catalysts were initially pre-reduced by H2, but this was followed by a few cycles of chemical looping steam reforming, where the catalysts were in turn oxidised in air and auto-reduced by the EtOH/AQ mixture. At 600 °C, EtOH/AQ reformed similarly to ethanol for molar steam to carbon ratios (S/C) between 2 and 5 on the H2-reduced catalysts. At S/C of 3.3, 90% of the carbon feed converted on catalyst A to CO2 (58%), CO (30%) and CH4 (2.7%), with 17 wt% H2 yield based on dry organic feedstock, equivalent to 78% of the equilibrium value. Catalyst A maintained these outputs for four cycles while B underperformed due to partial reduction

Gray Wolves and Livestock in Montana: A Recent History of Damage Management

The Montana gray wolf (Canis lupus) population grew from 2 wolves in 1979 to a minimum of 316 by late 2006. Resolving conflicts, both perceived and real, between wolves and livestock became a dominant social issue for the federal recovery program, and it remains so today. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service and now Montana Fish, Wildlife & Parks work with United States Department of Agriculture, Animal Plant Health Inspection Service, Wildlife Services to reduce depredation risks and address wolf-related conflicts through a combination of non-lethal and lethal management tools. The number of wolf complaints investigated from 1987-2006 increased as the population increased and expanded its distribution into Montana after reintroduction into Yellowstone National Park and central Idaho during 1995 and 1996. Montana wolf packs routinely encountered livestock, though wolf depredation was a relatively rare cause of livestock death and difficult to predict or prevent. Cattle and sheep were killed most often from March to October, although losses were confirmed each month. From 1987 to 2006, wolves killed 230 cattle and 436 sheep. However, confirmed losses probably represent a fraction of actual wolf losses. Few other types of livestock classes were killed. Conflicts are addressed on a case-by-case basis, striving to connect the agency response to the damage in space and time and to decrease the potential for future losses. Lethal control is implemented incrementally after predation was verified, and 254 wolves were killed from 1987 to 2006. Only complete removal of either wolves or livestock eliminates the potential for wolf depredation. The continued presence of a viable wolf population requires that a wide variety of non-lethal and lethal tools be investigated and implemented. That combination will also be required to maintain local public tolerance of wolves where the two overlap and to foster broad public acceptance of techniques used to minimize conflicts. Resolving wolf and livestock conflicts at a local scale is but one component of a larger state wolf conservation and management program. When wolves are delisted, regulated public harvest will allow us to more proactively manage the population

Adaptive Wolf Management: The Regulated Public Harvest Component

Montana’s wolf (Canis lupus) conservation and management plan is based on adaptive management principles and includes regulated public harvest as a population management tool. The need and opportunity to implement public harvest in 2008, 2009, and 2010 required Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks (FWP) to develop a stepped down adaptive management framework specific to harvest. For 2008 and 2009, FWP set modest objectives: implement a harvest, maintain a recovered population, and begin the learning process to inform development of future hunting regulations and quotas. In 2010, FWP used a formal Structured Decision Making Process to more clearly define priorities and challenges of setting a wolf season, outline objectives of a successful season, and evaluate consequences and trade-offs between alternative management actions. For all years, FWP used a modeling process to simulate a wide range of harvest rates across three harvest units and to predict harvest effects on the minimum number of wolves, packs and breeding pairs. Model inputs were derived from minimum wolf numbers observed in the field. Modeling allowed consideration of a range of harvest quotas, predicted outcomes, and risk that harvest could drive the population below federally-required minimums. It also facilitated explicit consideration of how well a particular quota achieved objectives and how to adapt future regulations and quotas. Legal challenges to federal delisting restricted implementation of the first fair chase hunting season to 2009. Montana’s wolf population is securely recovered, despite the dynamic political and legal environments. Regardless, FWP remains committed to a scientific, data-driven approach to adaptive management

Does zero temperature decide on the nature of the electroweak phase transition?

Taking on a new perspective of the electroweak phase transition, we investigate in detail the role played by the depth of the electroweak minimum (“vacuum energy difference”). We find a strong correlation between the vacuum energy difference and the strength of the phase transition. This correlation only breaks down if a negative eigen-value develops upon thermal corrections in the squared scalar mass matrix in the broken vacuum before the critical temperature. As a result the scalar fields slide across field space toward the symmetric vacuum, often causing a significantly weakened phase transition. Phenomenological constraints are found to strongly disfavour such sliding scalar scenarios. For several popular models, we suggest numerical bounds that guarantee a strong first order electroweak phase transition. The zero temperature phenomenology can then be studied in these parameter regions without the need for any finite temperature calculations. For almost all non-supersymmetric models with phenomenologically viable parameter points, we find a strong phase transition is guaranteed if the vacuum energy difference is greater than −8.8 × 107 GeV4. For the GNMSSM, we guarantee a strong phase transition for phenomenologically viable parameter points if the vacuum energy difference is greater than −6.9×107 GeV4. Alternatively, we capture more of the parameter space exhibiting a strong phase transition if we impose a simultaneous bound on the vacuum energy difference and the singlet mass

BBS proteins interact genetically with the IFT pathway to influence SHH-related phenotypes

There are numerous genes for which loss-of-function mutations do not produce apparent phenotypes even though statistically significant quantitative changes to biological pathways are observed. To evaluate the biological meaning of small effects is challenging. Bardet–Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a heterogeneous autosomal recessive disorder characterized by obesity, retinopathy, polydactyly, renal malformations, learning disabilities and hypogenitalism, as well as secondary phenotypes including diabetes and hypertension. BBS knockout mice recapitulate most human phenotypes including obesity, retinal degeneration and male infertility. However, BBS knockout mice do not develop polydacyly. Here we showed that the loss of BBS genes in mice result in accumulation of Smoothened and Patched 1 in cilia and have a decreased Shh response. Knockout of Bbs7 combined with a hypomorphic Ift88 allele (orpk as a model for Shh dysfuction) results in embryonic lethality with e12.5 embryos having exencephaly, pericardial edema, cleft palate and abnormal limb development, phenotypes not observed in Bbs7−/− mice. Our results indicate that BBS genes modulate Shh pathway activity and interact genetically with the intraflagellar transport (IFT) pathway to play a role in mammalian development. This study illustrates an effective approach to appreciate the biological significance of a small effect

An artificial intelligence tool for heterogeneous team formation in the classroom

Nowadays, there is increasing interest in the development of teamwork skills in the educational context. This growing interest is motivated by its pedagogical effectiveness and the fact that, in labour contexts, enterprises organize their employees in teams to carry out complex projects. Despite its crucial importance in the classroom and industry, there is a lack of support for the team formation process. Not only do many factors influence team performance, but the problem becomes exponentially costly if teams are to be optimized. In this article, we propose a tool whose aim it is to cover such a gap. It combines artificial intelligence techniques such as coalition structure generation, Bayesian learning, and Belbin's role theory to facilitate the generation of working groups in an educational context. This tool improves current state of the art proposals in three ways: i) it takes into account the feedback of other teammates in order to establish the most predominant role of a student instead of self-perception questionnaires; ii) it handles uncertainty with regard to each student's predominant team role; iii) it is iterative since it considers information from several interactions in order to improve the estimation of role assignments. We tested the performance of the proposed tool in an experiment involving students that took part in three different team activities. The experiments suggest that the proposed tool is able to improve different teamwork aspects such as team dynamics and student satisfaction

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Ciliopathy is differentially distributed in the brain of a Bardet-Biedl syndrome mouse model

Bardet-Biedl syndrome (BBS) is a genetically heterogeneous inherited human disorder displaying a pleotropic phenotype. Many of the symptoms characterized in the human disease have been reproduced in animal models carrying deletions or knock-in mutations of genes causal for the disorder. Thinning of the cerebral cortex, enlargement of the lateral and third ventricles, and structural changes in cilia are among the pathologies documented in these animal models. Ciliopathy is of particular interest in light of recent studies that have implicated primary neuronal cilia (PNC) in neuronal signal transduction. In the present investigation, we tested the hypothesis that areas of the brain responsible for learning and memory formation would differentially exhibit PNC abnormalities in animals carrying a deletion of the Bbs4 gene (Bbs4-/-). Immunohistochemical localization of adenylyl cyclase-III (ACIII), a marker restricted to PNC, revealed dramatic alterations in PNC morphology and a statistically significant reduction in number of immunopositive cilia in the hippocampus and amygdala of Bbs4-/- mice compared to wild type (WT) littermates. Western blot analysis confirmed the decrease of ACIII levels in the hippocampus and amygdala of Bbs4-/- mice, and electron microscopy demonstrated pathological alterations of PNC in the hippocampus and amygdala. Importantly, no neuronal loss was found within the subregions of amygdala and hippocampus sampled in Bbs4-/- mice and there were no statistically significant alterations of ACIII immunopositive cilia in other areas of the brain not known to contribute to the BBS phenotype. Considered with data documenting a role of cilia in signal transduction these findings support the conclusion that alterations in cilia structure or neurochemical phenotypes may contribute to the cognitive deficits observed in the Bbs4-/- mouse mode. © 2014 Agassandian et al