Oral History Interview: Cal Scraggs

This document is a transcript of a statement given by Cal Scraggs at a public hearing conducted by the West Virginia Department of Energy on June 28, 1988, in Lincoln County. The purpose of the hearing was to give residents a chance to voice their opinions concerning an application by two coal companies to strip-mine at Six Mile Creek in Lincoln County. Cal Scraggs worked in strip mining before and he argues in favor of the permit.https://mds.marshall.edu/oral_history/1345/thumbnail.jp

Oral History Interview: Coach Barry Scraggs

This interview is one of a series conducted concerning West Virginia communities, focusing on Ceredo. At the time of the interview, Barry Scraggs was a coach at Ceredo-Kenova High School. The focus of the interview is Coach Carl Kenneth Ward. He also discusses Coach Kenneth Dale Craycraft, coaching tactics, and teaching moral values.https://mds.marshall.edu/oral_history/1301/thumbnail.jp

Evaluation of EPIM III: Emerging Insights From the Evaluation So Far

This report sets out some emerging insights from the ongoing evaluation of the European Programme for Integration and Migration (EPIM) 2012-2015 programme. The activities of EPIM and this evaluation lie at the very heart of EPIM's efforts to strengthen the capacity of NGOs active in migration and integration issues, to engage with and influence decision-making at EU and Member state levels, and to do so by drawing on a rigorous evidence base, and through a pragmatic approach. Founded in 2005 as an activity of the Network of European Foundations (NEF) in a unique effort to fund European migration and integration organisations, EPIM's activities include strategic grant-making as well as networking, capacity-building, supporting advocacy and policy work. The Programme has now disbursed over 3m to more than 24 grantee organisations. Drawing on experience and learning from previous phases, EPIM's current three core areas of focus are asylum seekers, undocumented migrants, and equality, integration and social inclusion of vulnerable migrants. Recognising the importance of the role played by civil society, one of EPIM's key goals is to strengthen the advocacy capacities of NGOs at the European level. This goal reflects the fact that over the past decade the EU has become an important actor in the field of immigration and asylum, as well as that the majority of countries face some challenges in this area

Development of a non-parametric robot calibration method to improve drilling accuracy

The drilling of large quantities of repetitive holes during the manufacture of large aerospace components is often considered a key limiting factor with regards to production efficiency. Whilst the desire within aerospace is to use relatively cheap six axis robot arms with drilling end effector units, their poor accuracy remains an obstacle. Robot calibration presents a way of improving robot accuracy such that aerospace drilling tolerances can be met, without permanently committing metrology equipment to an automation cell during production. Extensive research has been conducted into robot calibration by correcting the kinematic model, known as parametric calibration. This method is highly complex, and calibrates the robot across the entire working volume. This is often not required in industrial drilling applications, as drilling routines are often contained within a smaller volume of the robot reach. In this paper, a non-parametric method of robot calibration is proposed. This method involves calibrating within regions of the working volume where the robot pose is similar, and thus the effects of geometric errors in the kinematic model are roughly constant. By establishing the average positional error for each region, the accuracy can be locally improved by compensation through definition of the tool centre point. The proposed method can be completed without the use of kinematic models or complex mathematics, making it more suitable to industrial users. From experimental trials, a significant improvement in the positional accuracy of holes drilled using a standard six axis robot is reported, from 2 mm to 0.1 mm, well within the requirements of the majority of aerospace applications

β decay of Na32

The β-decay of Na32 has been studied using β-γ coincidences. New transitions and levels are tentatively placed in the level scheme of Mg32 from an analysis of γ-γ and β-γ-γ coincidences. The observation of the indirect feeding of the 2321 keV state in Mg32 removes some restrictions previously placed on the spin assignment for this state. No evidence of a state at 2117 keV in Mg32 is found. Previously unobserved weak transitions up to 5.4 MeV were recorded but could not be placed in the decay scheme of Na32. © 2007 The American Physical Society

Prospects and challenges for the conservation of farm animal genomic resources, 2015-2025

Livestock conservation practice is changing rapidly in light of policy developments, climate change and diversifying market demands. The last decade has seen a step change in technology and analytical approaches available to define, manage and conserve Farm Animal Genomic Resources (FAnGR). However, these rapid changes pose challenges for FAnGR conservation in terms of technological continuity, analytical capacity and integrative methodologies needed to fully exploit new, multidimensional data. The final conference of the ESF Genomic Resources program aimed to address these interdisciplinary problems in an attempt to contribute to the agenda for research and policy development directions during the coming decade. By 2020, according to the Convention on Biodiversity’s Aichi Target 13, signatories should ensure that “… the genetic diversity of … farmed and domesticated animals and of wild relatives … is maintained, and strategies have been developed and implemented for minimizing genetic erosion and safeguarding their genetic diversity.” However, the real extent of genetic erosion is very difficult to measure using current data. Therefore, this challenging target demands better coverage, understanding and utilization of genomic and environmental data, the development of optimized ways to integrate these data with social and other sciences and policy analysis to enable more flexible, evidence-based models to underpin FAnGR conservation. At the conference, we attempted to identify the most important problems for effective livestock genomic resource conservation during the next decade. Twenty priority questions were identified that could be broadly categorised into challenges related to methodology, analytical approaches, data management and conservation. It should be acknowledged here that while the focus of our meeting was predominantly around genetics, genomics and animal science, many of the practical challenges facing conservation of genomic resources are societal in origin and are predicated on the value (e.g. socio-economic and cultural) of these resources to farmers, rural communities and society as a whole. The overall conclusion is that despite the fact that the livestock sector has been relatively well-organised in the application of genetic methodologies to date, there is still a large gap between the current state-of-the-art in the use of tools to characterise genomic resources and its application to many non commercial and local breeds, hampering the consistent utilisation of genetic and genomic data as indicators of genetic erosion and diversity. The livestock genomic sector therefore needs to make a concerted effort in the coming decade to enable to the democratisation of the powerful tools that are now at its disposal, and to ensure that they are applied in the context of breed conservation as well as development