Forage Inventory and Modeling in Uintah and Ouray Reservation Rangelands

The Uintah and Ouray Reservation in northeastern Utah has not been widely studied, and access to non-tribal members is highly restricted. We sampled vegetation to summarize condition in 300,000 acres of unsurveyed Reservation lands in 2017-2018, combining these data with data collected by the Bureau of Indian Affairs from 2010-2015 to complete an initial rangeland vegetation inventory of the Reservation. This survey was designed to inform management of the area by determining cattle stocking rates and overall ecological condition across the Reservation. Both the density of forage available to cattle and appropriate cattle stocking rates vary greatly throughout management units in the Reservation. We also used the vegetation inventory data to run a model which estimates forage availability in every year from 1984-2018 throughout the Reservation. Whereas the initial inventory only considers the typical forage availability in management units, this method allows us to estimate how forage varies through space and time. The results show that forage availability varies significantly through time, declining and increasing by approximately one-third from median forage availability. Such variability indicates that typical forage availability, the measure used to determine stocking rates in the initial inventory, does not fully address forage availability dynamics. Since actual forage availability can be far lesser or greater than typical forage availability, stocking rates based on typical availability will often be an under or over estimation. The model results therefore lend a fuller picture of appropriate stocking rates. This may improve grazing management by revealing how much forage declines in unfavorable years such as during drought, and improving grazing planning during these years. The forage availability model can continue to be used in the future to monitor trends in vegetation over time, and the modeling method may be applicable to other similar study systems

Reducing Orbit Covariance for Continuous Thrust Spacecraft Transfers

The calculus of variations is used to develop the necessary theory and derive the optimality conditions for a spacecraft to transfer between a set of initial and final conditions, while minimizing a combination of fuel consumption and a function of the estimation error covariance matrix associated with the spacecraft state. The theory is developed in a general manner that allows for multiple observers, moving observers, covariance associated with an arbitrary frame, a wide variety of observation types, multiple gravity bodies, and uncertainties in the spacecraft equations of motion based on the thrusting status of the engine. A series of example trajectories from low Earth orbit (LEO) to a near geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) shows that either the trace of the covariance at the final time or the integral of the trace of the covariance matrix associated with the error in the Cartesian position and velocity can be reduced significantly with a small increase in the fuel consumption. An additional example illustrates the covariance associated with the semimajor axis can be significantly reduced for a transfer from Earth orbit to lunar orbit. This example illustrates multiple, moving observers as well as a transfer in a multi-body gravitational field

Use and Evaluation of a Statewide 4-H Volunteer Newsletter

The Ohio 4-H Cloverbud Connections newsletter is a statewide publication targeted for volunteers working with K - 2 youth. Two statewide surveys in Ohio were conducted with 4-H volunteers and 4-H Extension staff to measure the usefulness and utilization of the newsletter. Results indicated 4-H Cloverbud volunteers and 4-H staff utilize the newsletter and consider it a valuable resource. Ninety-seven percent of the 4-H Cloverbud volunteers and 4-H staff want the newsletter continued. Findings indicate the importance of 4-H Cloverbud activities for readers, need for more awareness of the newsletter Web site, and importance of 4-H Cloverbud volunteer training

Photophysics and Dihedral Freedom of the Chromophore in Yellow, Blue, and Green Fluorescent Protein

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) and GFP-like fluorescent proteins owe their photophysical properties to an autocatalytically formed intrinsic chromophore. According to quantum mechanical calculations, the excited state of chromophore model systems has significant dihedral freedom, which may lead to fluorescence quenching intersystem crossing. Molecular dynamics simulations with freely rotating chromophoric dihedrals were performed on green, yellow, and blue fluorescent proteins in order to model the dihedral freedom available to the chromophore in the excited state. Most current theories suggest that a restriction in the rotational freedom of the fluorescent protein chromophore will lead to an increase in fluorescence brightness and/or quantum yield. According to our calculations, the dihedral freedom of the systems studied (BFP > A5 > YFP > GFP) increases in the inverse order to the quantum yield. In all simulations, the chromophore undergoes a negatively correlated hula twist (also known as a bottom hula twist mechanism)

An Introduction to Psychological Statistics

This work has been superseded by Introduction to Statistics in the Psychological Sciences available from https://irl.umsl.edu/oer/25/. - We are constantly bombarded by information, and finding a way to filter that information in an objective way is crucial to surviving this onslaught with your sanity intact. This is what statistics, and logic we use in it, enables us to do. Through the lens of statistics, we learn to find the signal hidden in the noise when it is there and to know when an apparent trend or pattern is really just randomness. The study of statistics involves math and relies upon calculations of numbers. But it also relies heavily on how the numbers are chosen and how the statistics are interpreted. This work was created as part of the University of Missouri’s Affordable and Open Access Educational Resources Initiative (https://www.umsystem.edu/ums/aa/oer). The contents of this work have been adapted from the following Open Access Resources: Online Statistics Education: A Multimedia Course of Study (http://onlinestatbook.com/). Project Leader: David M. Lane, Rice University. Changes to the original works were made by Dr. Garett C. Foster in the Department of Psychological Sciences to tailor the text to fit the needs of the introductory statistics course for psychology majors at the University of Missouri – St. Louis. Materials from the original sources have been combined, reorganized, and added to by the current author, and any conceptual, mathematical, or typographical errors are the responsibility of the current author

Random billiards with wall temperature and associated Markov chains

By a random billiard we mean a billiard system in which the standard specular reflection rule is replaced with a Markov transition probabilities operator P that, at each collision of the billiard particle with the boundary of the billiard domain, gives the probability distribution of the post-collision velocity for a given pre-collision velocity. A random billiard with microstructure (RBM) is a random billiard for which P is derived from a choice of geometric/mechanical structure on the boundary of the billiard domain. RBMs provide simple and explicit mechanical models of particle-surface interaction that can incorporate thermal effects and permit a detailed study of thermostatic action from the perspective of the standard theory of Markov chains on general state spaces. We focus on the operator P itself and how it relates to the mechanical/geometric features of the microstructure, such as mass ratios, curvatures, and potentials. The main results are as follows: (1) we characterize the stationary probabilities (equilibrium states) of P and show how standard equilibrium distributions studied in classical statistical mechanics, such as the Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution and the Knudsen cosine law, arise naturally as generalized invariant billiard measures; (2) we obtain some basic functional theoretic properties of P. Under very general conditions, we show that P is a self-adjoint operator of norm 1 on an appropriate Hilbert space. In a simple but illustrative example, we show that P is a compact (Hilbert-Schmidt) operator. This leads to the issue of relating the spectrum of eigenvalues of P to the features of the microstructure;(3) we explore the latter issue both analytically and numerically in a few representative examples;(4) we present a general algorithm for simulating these Markov chains based on a geometric description of the invariant volumes of classical statistical mechanics

Parental Support and Adolescents’ Coping with Academic Stressors: A Longitudinal Study of Parents’ Influence Beyond Academic Pressure and Achievement

Adolescents face many academic pressures that require good coping skills, but coping skills can also depend on social resources, such as parental support and fewer negative interactions. The aim of this study was to determine if parental support and parental negative interactions concurrently and longitudinally relate to adolescents’ ways of academic coping, above and beyond the impact of three types of academic stress, students’ achievement at school (i.e., grades in school), and age. Survey data were collected from 839 Australian students in grades 5 to 10 (Mage = 12.2, SD = 1.72; 50% girls). Students completed measures of support and negative interactions with parents; academic stress from workload, external pressure (teachers/parents) to achieve, and intrapsychic pressure for high achievement; and ways of academic coping that were grouped into two positive and two negative types. Hypothesized associations were tested concurrently and from one year to the next using path modeling. Beyond the numerous significant influences of academic stress and achievement on coping, and control for age and COVID-19 timing, adolescents with more parental support reported more use of engagement coping (e.g., strategizing) and comfort-seeking, whereas those who reported more negative interactions with parents reported more use of disengagement coping (e.g., concealment) and escape. In the longitudinal model, parental support predicted an increase in engagement and comfort-seeking and a decrease in disengagement coping, whereas negative interaction with parents predicted an increase in disengagement coping. Overall, the findings support the view that coping with academic stressors will continue to depend on parent-adolescent relationships even into the teen years

On the isolated points in the space of groups

We investigate the isolated points in the space of finitely generated groups. We give a workable characterization of isolated groups and study their hereditary properties. Various examples of groups are shown to yield isolated groups. We also discuss a connection between isolated groups and solvability of the word problem.Comment: 30 pages, no figure. v2: minor changes, published version from March 200