Red River Gorge Residents: A Cultural and Historical Perspective

This study investigates the relationship between the remaining residents of Appalachian Eastern Kentucky\u27s Red River Gorge area and their environment with special emphasis on the historical and current social factors that play a role in their refusal to vacate the area. For two decades, these people have faced the possibility of losing their land and homes to area development projects while they have simultaneously become aware of what it can mean to be labeled Appalachian . Currently, they are contending with the implications of a management plan proposed by the United States Forest Service. Cross-cultural research on areas developed as recreational arenas indicates that the residents as a whole stand only to lose in such situations. The optimum solution from the perspective of the people along the Red River is to be left alone, but this is not going to happen as the popularity of the Gorge has steadily grown over the past years and as the Forest Service has greatly increased its holdings. Appropriate planning to reduce the losses of the locals who view their land as irreplaceable is suggested as a primary consideration in this area and in others where recreational development is planned

The Morphology of Steve

This report is part of Project Steve. Project Steve is, among other things, the first scientific analysis of the sex, geographic location, and body size of scientists named Steve. We performed this research for the best of all reasons: we discovered that we had lots of data. No scientist can resist the opportunity to analyze data, regardless of where that data came from or why it was gathered

Landowners, Recreationists, and Government: Cooperation and Conflict in Red River Gorge

The research reported is based on a holistic sociocultural study of a popular regional recreation site in Eastern Kentucky, the Red River Gorge. Our research with over 3200 recreational visitors to the Gorge, 395 members of four recreation/conservation groups, 44 local landowners, and with a large number of management personnel from various governmental agencies permits us to provide an especially comprehensive overview of the problems and prospects of this popular area. Our general purpose is to provide descriptive and analytic information that will allow managers to more effectively understand and cope with their work in Red River Gorge. In addition to this overall goal, our research provides an example of the use of some innovative ideas and techniques for the study of recreationists. Among our study tools was the construction of density tolerance curves for our recreationists. This method of assessing visitors\u27 tolerance for other recreationists was borrowed from the work of Heberlein (1977) though we know of no other instance in which it has been used so extensively. Density tolerance is an important component of the measurement of social carrying capacity of areas such as Red River Gorge. Perhaps the most important contribution of this research is the positing of the idea of recreational niches. Our work demonstrates that recreational areas like the Red River Gorge may contain many different recreational niches that are used in very different ways from other recreational sites within the same general setting. In addition, characteristics of the visitors who use any niche may be quite different from the characteristics of visitors using other sites. The recognition of the existence of recreational niches is vital to future recreational research which has management implications. The presence of recreational niches in an area may bias the data collection unless data are collected in all types of niches. Using only one niche as representative of the entire recreating populace can lead to erroneous predictions of visitor characteristics and preferences, and may lead to inappropriate management, The niche concept can also be used positively: managers may wish to encourage or discourage certain types of users, and knowledge of niche variety may contribute to this goal

Seasonal patterns of carbon dioxide and water fluxes in three representative tundra ecosystems in northern Alaska

© The Author(s), 2012. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Ecosphere 3, no 1 (2012): art4, doi:10.1890/ES11-00202.1.Understanding the carbon dioxide and water fluxes in the Arctic is essential for accurate assessment and prediction of the responses of these ecosystems to climate change. In the Arctic, there have been relatively few studies of net CO2, water, and energy exchange using micrometeorological methods due to the difficulty of performing these measurements in cold, remote regions. When these measurements are performed, they are usually collected only during the short summer growing season. We established eddy covariance flux towers in three representative Alaska tundra ecosystems (heath tundra, tussock tundra, and wet sedge tundra), and have collected CO2, water, and energy flux data continuously for over three years (September 2007–May 2011). In all ecosystems, peak CO2 uptake occurred during July, with accumulations of 51–95 g C/m2 during June–August. The timing of the switch from CO2 source to sink in the spring appears to be regulated by the number of growing degree days early in the season, indicating that warmer springs may promote increased net CO2 uptake. However, this increased uptake in the spring may be lost through warmer temperatures in the late growing season that promote respiration, if this respiration is not impeded by large amounts of precipitation or cooler temperatures. Net CO2 accumulation during the growing season was generally lost through respiration during the snow covered months of September–May, turning the ecosystems into net sources of CO2 over measurement period. The water balance from June to August at the three ecosystems was variable, with the most variability observed in the heath tundra, and the least in the tussock tundra. These findings underline the importance of collecting data over the full annual cycle and across multiple types of tundra ecosystems in order to come to a more complete understanding of CO2 and water fluxes in the Arctic.This research was funded by the National Science Foundation Office of Polar Programs (OPP 0632264), with a grant during the International Polar Year, ‘Collaborative Research on Carbon, Water, and Energy Balance of the Arctic Landscape at Flagship Observatories and in a PanArctic Network’. Trac

Investigating the role of somatic sequencing platforms for phaeochromocytoma and paraganglioma in a large UK cohort.

Funder: NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research CentreFunder: Gottfried and Julia Bangerter–Rhyner FoundationFunder: www.amend.org.ukFunder: Barts CharityFunder: Cambridge NIHR BRC Stratified Medicine Core Laboratory NGS HubFunder: Freiwillige Akademische GesellschaftOBJECTIVES: Phaeochromocytomas and paragangliomas (PPGL) are rare neuroendocrine tumours with malignant potential and a hereditary basis in almost 40% of patients. Germline genetic testing has transformed the management of PPGL enabling stratification of surveillance approaches, earlier diagnosis and predictive testing of at-risk family members. Recent studies have identified somatic mutations in a further subset of patients, indicating that molecular drivers at either a germline or tumour level can be identified in up to 80% of PPGL cases. The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical utility of somatic sequencing in a large cohort of patients with PPGL in the United Kingdom. DESIGN AND PATIENTS: Prospectively collected matched germline and tumour samples (development cohort) and retrospectively collected tumour samples (validation cohort) of patients with PPGL were investigated. MEASUREMENTS: Clinical characteristics of patients were assessed and tumour and germline DNA was analysed using a next-generation sequencing strategy. A screen for variants within 'mutation hotspots' in 68 human cancer genes was performed. RESULTS: Of 141 included patients, 45 (32%) had a germline mutation. In 37 (26%) patients one or more driver somatic variants were identified including 26 likely pathogenic or pathogenic variants and 19 variants of uncertain significance. Pathogenic somatic variants, observed in 25 (18%) patients, were most commonly identified in the VHL, NF1, HRAS and RET genes. Pathogenic somatic variants were almost exclusively identified in patients without a germline mutation (all but one), suggesting that somatic sequencing is likely to be most informative for those patients with negative germline genetic test results. CONCLUSIONS: Somatic sequencing may further stratify surveillance approaches for patients without a germline genetic driver and may also inform targeted therapeutic strategies for patients with metastatic disease

Perceptions of parents on satisfaction with care in the pediatric intensive care unit: the EMPATHIC study

Abstract: PURPOSE: To identify parental perceptions on pediatric intensive care-related satisfaction items within the framework of developing a Dutch pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) satisfaction instrument. METHODS: Prospective cohort study in tertiary PICUs at seven university medical centers in The Netherlands. PARTICIPANTS: Parents of 1,042 children discharged from a PICU. RESULTS: A 78-item questionnaire was sent to 1,042 parents and completed by 559 (54%). Seventeen satisfaction items were rated with mean scores or =1.65, and thus considered of limited value. The empirical structure of the items was in agreement with the theoretically formulated domains: Information, Care a

A qualitative study exploring the experiences of parents of children admitted to seven Dutch pediatric intensive care units

Purpose: To explore parents' experiences during the admission of their children to a pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). Method: Qualitative method using in-depth interviews. Thematic analysis was applied to capture parents' experiences. Thirty-nine mothers and 25 fathers of 41 children admitted to seven of the eight PICUs in university medical centers in The Netherlands were interviewed. Results: Parents were interviewed within 1 month after their child's discharge from a PICU. Thematic analysis identified 1,514 quotations that were coded into 63 subthemes. The subthemes were categorized into six major themes: attitude of the professionals; coordination of care; emotional intensity; information management; environmental factors; parent participation. Most themes had an overarching relationship representing the array of experiences encountered by parents when their child was staying in a PICU. The theme of emotional intensity was in particular associated with all the other themes. Conclusions: The findings provided a range of themes and subthemes describing the complexity of the parental experiences of a PICU admission. The subthemes presen

The FLUXNET2015 dataset and the ONEFlux processing pipeline for eddy covariance data

The FLUXNET2015 dataset provides ecosystem-scale data on CO2, water, and energy exchange between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and other meteorological and biological measurements, from 212 sites around the globe (over 1500 site-years, up to and including year 2014). These sites, independently managed and operated, voluntarily contributed their data to create global datasets. Data were quality controlled and processed using uniform methods, to improve consistency and intercomparability across sites. The dataset is already being used in a number of applications, including ecophysiology studies, remote sensing studies, and development of ecosystem and Earth system models. FLUXNET2015 includes derived-data products, such as gap-filled time series, ecosystem respiration and photosynthetic uptake estimates, estimation of uncertainties, and metadata about the measurements, presented for the first time in this paper. In addition, 206 of these sites are for the first time distributed under a Creative Commons (CC-BY 4.0) license. This paper details this enhanced dataset and the processing methods, now made available as open-source codes, making the dataset more accessible, transparent, and reproducible.Peer reviewe