Recent occurrence of Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii, in Waikato lakes of New Zealand.

Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii is a toxin-producing species of cyanobacteria that in autumn 2003 was recorded for the first time in three shallow (max. depth ≤5 m) Waikato lakes and a hydro-electric dam on the Waikato River, New Zealand. It formed water blooms at densities >100 000 cells/ml in Lakes Waahi and Whangape. Net rates of population growth >0.2 day-1 were recorded for C. raciborskii in Lakes Ngaroto, Waahi, and Karapiro, based on comparisons of low numbers (detection of cells/ml) from initial samples and its presence at bloom densities (>15 000 cells/ml) in the subsequent sample "x"-"y" days later. C. raciborskii may be well adapted to rapid proliferation in the Waikato lakes, which are eutrophic to hypertrophic, with high light attenuation, and where nitrogen (N) fixation may provide it with a competitive advantage over non-nitrogen fixing algae under N-limited conditions

Essays on the Economics of Energy and Transportation

The Washington State Department of Transportation (WSDOT) is responsible for planning, operating, and maintaining a highway network consisting of over 18,500 lane-miles of highway. In recent years the growing uncertainty about oil prices and availability has made long-range transportation planning even more challenging. Rather than relying on trend extrapolation, this study uses market mechanisms to shed light on key long-range transportation planning assumptions. In particular, this study was conducted to help WSDOT assess the likelihood that natural gas will substitute for petroleum fuels and estimate the impacts that changes in fuel prices will have on natural gas vehicle demand, fuel consumption, and Greenhouse Gas emissions. The main findings of this project were that there is an unstable price difference per unit of energy between natural gas and oil. This price difference accounts for the relative attractiveness of natural gas as a transportation fuel. Furthermore, an international market for natural gas is emerging due to the international trade in liquefied natural gas. Despite these potential benefits the market has created for the use of natural gas as transportation fuel, our model still predicts that consumers will not adopt natural gas vehicles. Due to the low adoption of natural gas vehicles, pollution abatement policies designed around increasing adoption of natural gas vehicles is likely to be very expensive

Exploring the Relationships Between Pornography Consumption, Relationship Satisfaction, Relationship Beliefs, and Masculinity

Pornography is widely available and consumed in the United States and worldwide. Despite pornography’s wide spread use and expansions since the advent of the Internet, the psychosocial problems related to its use are not fully delineated. Previous studies have explored the relationship between pornography consumption and psychosocial variables such as sexual and physical violence against women, misogynistic beliefs, sexual callousness, acceptance of rape myths, and other problematic sexual beliefs and behaviors. Fewer studies have explored pornography use and its impact on relationship variables such as relationship satisfaction and beliefs about relational constructs such as intimacy, passion, and equality/independence. Furthermore, there are limited studies on how pornography consumption relates to constructs such as masculinity and body satisfaction among male users. The current study aimed to explore the relationship between these constructs, as well as further delineate pornography consumption by examining frequency, duration, method, subgenre, and perceived harm. One hundred fifty-six males were recruited from various northeastern universities and through online advertisements. Results demonstrated a significant negative relationship between pornography consumption and relationship satisfaction. Alternatively, body dissatisfaction and masculinity did not relate to pornography use or relationship satisfaction. Exploratory analysis indicated that pornography consumption was not related to perceived harm or opinions about intimacy, passion, or equality/independence. Research and clinical implications of the findings and future directions are discussed

Compressed Natural Gas Vehicles: Financially Viable Option?

Natural gas vehicles are being developed because of increasing concerns about energy dependence, air quality and emissions, and, more recently, climate change. The major advantage of natural gas vehicles is their lower fuel cost. Several economic and technical factors such as limited range and availability of relevant infrastructure prevent widespread adoption of natural gas vehicles. A model for the financial analysis of the possibility of compressed natural gas (CNG) vehicles being competitive with gasoline-powered vehicles is offered. The model evaluates the extent to which commuters find adoption of CNG vehicles to be economically viable in the United States. The results indicate that the percentage of commuters who would adopt CNG vehicles is small, even if fueling infrastructure were fully developed and CNG vehicles were widely available for purchase. A larger number of vehicle miles traveled and increased gasoline prices encourage commuters to adopt CNG vehicles, while higher fuel economy and purchase price differentials result in lower adoption rates. In some cases, which vary in accordance with the values of the model’s parameters, commuters purchase a CNG vehicle as their second car and keep a gasoline-powered car as their first

Musical Robots For Children With ASD Using A Client-Server Architecture

Presented at the 22nd International Conference on Auditory Display (ICAD-2016)People with Autistic Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are known to have difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions, which affects their social integration. Leveraging the recent advances in interactive robot and music therapy approaches, and integrating both, we have designed musical robots that can facilitate social and emotional interactions of children with ASD. Robots communicate with children with ASD while detecting their emotional states and physical activities and then, make real-time sonification based on the interaction data. Given that we envision the use of multiple robots with children, we have adopted a client-server architecture. Each robot and sensing device plays a role as a terminal, while the sonification server processes all the data and generates harmonized sonification. After describing our goals for the use of sonification, we detail the system architecture and on-going research scenarios. We believe that the present paper offers a new perspective on the sonification application for assistive technologies

Last Straw: The Effect of Guilt on Pro-Environmental Behavior

Honorable Mention Winner Although many environmental campaigns have pushed to eliminate plastic straws from daily consumption, concerns have surfaced that an increase in the simple behavior of refusing plastic straws will generate less action toward more effective pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs). This study implemented a guilt manipulation to urge participants to reduce their straw use and tested spillover effects to various household and travel PEBs. 234 Mturk participants (34% women) indicated their current PEBs at Time 1 and were randomly assigned to the guilt condition or a control condition. One week later (Time 2), participants completed a survey of the same measures, with 184 participants completing an identical survey three months later (Time 3). Results showed that, although the guilt manipulation did not affect straw use, a reduction in straw use positively spilled over to all PEBs at Time 2, with indirect effects through environmental identity for multiple PEBs. Several spillover effects had diminished by Time 3. The results show it is necessary to consider environmental identity when investigating PEB spillover and that negative spillover may not be a concern

HELP: Handheld Emergency Logistics Program for Generating Structured Requests in Stressful Conditions

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2014.07.036Large-scale disasters usually entail serious damage to life and property. Effective response to such disasters requires rapid reaction and efficient, accurate processes. Since disasters often strike without any prior warning, first responders have very little time to train and prepare for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations. These operations can span from several weeks to several months. This puts first responders in rather stressful conditions; they may not be trained to handle the task they have to, fatigued, and working in rather austere conditions. We are developing a system called HELP - Handheld Emergency Logistics Program – to enable first responders to rapidly request resources without the need for advance training. HELP runs on commercial-off-the-shelf mobile phones and tablets. We focus on the first responder’s ability to use HELP in stressful conditions by minimizing the chance of error, reducing the need to pull information from memory, minimizing manual data entry, and by providing multiple redundant modalities for performing the same action. We present the design principles and architecture of HELP in this paper.United States Marine Corps’ Installations and Logistics Comman

Accessing and interpreting hydration dynamics on biological surfaces

Hydration water is necessary for protein function. It was long thought that the hydration water was simply an innocent solvent. However, current findings show that water is not an innocent solvent but an active player. It is now thought that hydration water plays a crucial role in biomolecular recognition by mediating the thermodynamic interaction between a protein and its ligand. The current challenge is to measure the hydration water and protein side chain thermodynamical properties.In this thesis we present site-specific measurements of hydration water motion on an array of biomolecular surfaces. We rationalize the hydration water motion in terms of the biomolecular surface properties. We find that the hydration water surrounding globular proteins contains information about the chemical and geometrical topology of the protein surface. We then present instrumentation developments to the Overhauser dynamic nuclear polarization (ODNP) methodology that made such measurements possible.We then introduce a new technique to measure the protein dynamic transition site- specifically and thus a new way to probe the coupling between a protein and the sur- rounding hydration water. We present measurements made on a small folded peptide system, the Trp Cage, and find that the hydration water motion and the protein dy- namic transition temperature are homogeneous across the surface of the peptide.Finally we discuss the development of a high field pulse EPR spectrometer that features arbitrary waveform generation capabilities. We showcase the applicability of this instrument and discuss the applicability of this instrument to the study of protein structure and dynamics

HELP: Handheld Emergency Logistics Program for Generating Structured Requests in Stressful Conditions

The article of record as published may be found at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.proeng.2014.07.036Large-scale disasters usually entail serious damage to life and property. Effective response to such disasters requires rapid reaction and efficient, accurate processes. Since disasters often strike without any prior warning, first responders have very little time to train and prepare for Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief operations. These operations can span from several weeks to several months. This puts first responders in rather stressful conditions; they may not be trained to handle the task they have to, fatigued, and working in rather austere conditions. We are developing a system called HELP - Handheld Emergency Logistics Program – to enable first responders to rapidly request resources without the need for advance training. HELP runs on commercial-off-the-shelf mobile phones and tablets. We focus on the first responder’s ability to use HELP in stressful conditions by minimizing the chance of error, reducing the need to pull information from memory, minimizing manual data entry, and by providing multiple redundant modalities for performing the same action. We present the design principles and architecture of HELP in this paper.United States Marine Corps’ Installations and Logistics Comman

The Spillover Effect: Fact or Fiction

In light of recent pro-environmental behavior (PEB) campaigns like banning plastic straws, some have raised concerns that performing small behaviors may undermine support for more difficult, and arguably more effective, political PEBs. Recent psychological research has focused on understanding how performing one PEB may spill over to increase (positive spillover) or decrease (negative spillover) the likelihood of performing additional PEB. We hypothesized that participants asked to perform a PEB due to identity reasons would display positive spillover and that participants asked to perform a PEB due to guilt reasons would display negative spillover. 120 student participants (93 women) were randomly assigned to conditions fostering pro-environmental identity or guilt, or to a control condition. The participants were then asked to commit to use a reusable cup for an entire week (PEB1). One week later participants were asked if they would be willing to write a letter to the governor in support of alternative energy sources (PEB2). We found no evidence of the condition affecting PEB1 or PEB2. Additionally, there was no significant relationship between performing PEB1 and performing PEB2. Therefore, we found no evidence of spillover effects. Worry about negative PEB spillover to political behaviors may be unwarranted