Bio-Processes of the Oxidation Ditch When Subjected to a Sub-Arctic Climate

Alaska's far northern area is sparsely populated primarily because of a severe climate which varies from northern temperate to Arctic. Construction and power costs are high. Skilled operating personnel are scarce and expensive, if available. Receiving streams are said to be delicate, particularily in the winter, when little possibility for reaeration exists due to a total ice cover. The oxidation ditch modification of the extended aeration activated sludge process appears to be well suited for the treatment of wastes in this environment. Past operating data on a plant of this type located in Interior Alaska (near Fairbanks) indicated it may be well suited to treat small volumes of domestic waste economically, with low sludge production, and minimal sensitivity to low temperatures.The work reported on herein was done under Contract No. RFP DACA 897l- R-0006 from the U. S. Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, Hanover, New Hampshire

Factors Affecting Water Management on the North Slope of Alaska

The North Slope of Alaska is undergoing sudden development following the recent discovery of large oil and gas reserves in the area. The water resources of the region should be carefully managed both to ensure adequate supplies of usable water at reasonable cost, and to guard against excessive deterioration of water quality. The likely effects on the environment of man's activities are investigated and found to be poorly understood at the present time. Research priorities are suggested to supply rapid answers to questions of immediate importance. The applicability of a regional management concept to the North Slope waters is considered and the concept is recommended as part of a broad land and water planning philosophy which would emphasize regional control over state and federal control. The use of economic incentives rather than standards for the control of water quality is not recommended at the present time.The work upon which this report is based was supported primarily by funds provided by the Sea Grant Program of the University of Alaska under grant No. 1-36109

Genetic testing in Marfan syndrome

Genetic testing is aiding rapid diagnosis of Marfan syndrome as a basis for management of eye, heart and skeletal disease. The affected patient's mutation can be used as a basis for prenatal or postnatal diagnosis of offspring. Preimplantation genetic diagnosis, the technique of choice, can ensure an unaffected pregnancy

Using A Nameserver to Enhance Control System Efficiency

The Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (Jefferson Lab) control system uses a nameserver to reduce system response time and to minimize the impact of client name resolution on front-end computers. The control system is based on the Experimental Physics and Industrial Control System (EPICS), which uses name-based broadcasts to initiate data communication. By default, when EPICS process variables (PV) are requested by client applications, all front-end computers receive the broadcasts and perform name resolution processing against local channel name lists. The nameserver is used to offload the name resolution task to a single node. This processing, formerly done on all front-end computers, is now done only by the nameserver. In a control system with heavily loaded front-end computers and high peak client connection loads, a significant performance improvement is seen. This paper describes the name server in more detail, and discusses the strengths and weaknesses of making name resolution a centralized service.Comment: ICALEPCS 200

Normative Data for Email Writing by Native Speakers of British English

This dataset includes emails from forty two control participants ranging from 16 to 88 years of age (mean = 46) and 9 to 24 years of education (mean = 13). Three emails were produced by each participant (between 2011 and 2014), each within a time limit of three minutes. It is expected that this normative data will be useful for clinicians and researchers working with adults with acquired language disorders in assessing email writing

Mindfulness Meditation Activates Altruism.

Clinical evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress, and improves emotion regulation due to modulation of activity in neural substrates linked to the regulation of emotions and social preferences. However, less was known about whether mindfulness meditation might alter pro-social behavior. Here we examined whether mindfulness meditation activates human altruism, a component of social cooperation. Using a simple donation game, which is a real-world version of the Dictator's Game, we randomly assigned 326 subjects to a mindfulness meditation online session or control and measured their willingness to donate a portion of their payment for participation as a charitable donation. Subjects who underwent the meditation treatment donated at a 2.61 times higher rate than the control (p = 0.005), after controlling for socio-demographics. We also found a larger treatment effect of meditation among those who did not go to college (p < 0.001) and those who were under 25 years of age (p < 0.001), with both subject groups contributing virtually nothing in the control condition. Our results imply high context modularity of human altruism and the development of intervention approaches including mindfulness meditation to increase social cooperation, especially among subjects with low baseline willingness to contribute

Root Endophyte Community Response to Increased Resource Availability

As climate changes, resource availability has the potential to influence plant-fungal symbiotic interactions. To understand how resource availability can influence these interactions, this research focuses specifically on how varying nitrogen levels affects root fungal endophyte communities found in American Beachgrass and Little Bluestem species of dune grasses. Fungal endophytes are intercellular symbionts living throughout the tissue of host plants and can be anywhere on the mutualistic to parasitic continuum. Previous research found in the literature focused on the effect nitrogen deposition has on plant species richness and determined that increased nitrogen led to a loss in species diversity. Using this previous data as a guide, it can be hypothesized that increased nitrogen will lead to decreased species diversity of the root fungal endophytes in both American Beachgrass and Little Bluestem species. Plants of both grass species were collected from plots containing different nitrogen levels at a long term resource addition field experiment located on the Great Lakes dunes. Roots from the plants were plated in media, and fungal communities emerged. Each morphospecies was isolated and sorted into 138 different morphotype characterizations. This preliminary data indicates a lot of species diversity in the root fungal endophytes and differentiation of species richness by abiotic treatment. By looking at the ways varying nitrogen levels can affect species diversity of fungi, this research can contribute to larger discussion of global change and its effect on species diversity.https://ir.library.louisville.edu/uars/1053/thumbnail.jp

The Archean crust in the Wawa-Chapleau-Timmins region. A field guidebook prepared for the 1983 Archean Geochemistry-Early Crustal Genesis Field Conference

This guidebook describes the characteristics and interrelationships of Archean greenstone-granite and high-grade gneiss terrains of the Superior Province. A 300-km long west to east transect between Wawa and Timmins, Ontario will be used to illustrate regional-scale relationships. The major geological features of the Superior Province are described