A survey of public attitudes to recycling in Glasgow (U.K.)

This paper describes a research project carried out to investigate the public use of waste recycling banks in Glasgow, U.K. The objective was to find out who was using the banks, and why, and to suggest ways of encouraging more people to use them. Interviews were conducted, with both users and non-users of the banks, at a number of sites in the north-west of the city. The results provided an insight into how the banks were used, what type of people were involved in recycling and what they thought about the operation of the scheme. The reasons given for non-participation were also obtained. A number of conclusions were drawn and recommendations were then made on how to encourage more people to use the banks

Developing the reflective practitioner - designing an undergraduate class

'The effective practitioner is a reflective practitioner' is a statement applicable to any professional practice, including operations research and management science (OR/MS). However, despite the importance to OR practice of reflection in action, the process of adapting knowledge and skills to new situations, academics have rarely given explicit consideration to the development of reflective skills when designing OR/MS courses. We emphasize the role of reflection in a class that final-year undergraduates studying OR/MS at the University of Strathclyde design to meet the objective of becoming a successful OR/MS practitioner. We describe the process of design, the structure of activities, and the assessment for a particular year using Cowan's (1998) three-part model of reflection for, in, and on action. Students' comments confirm the effectiveness of the class

Results from the worldwide coma morphology campaign for comet ISON (C/2012 S1)

We present the results of a global coma morphology campaign for comet C/2012 S1 (ISON), which was organized to involve both professional and amateur observers. In response to the campaign, many hundreds of images, from nearly two dozen groups were collected. Images were taken primarily in the continuum, which help to characterize the behavior of dust in the coma of comet ISON. The campaign received images from January 12 through November 22, 2013 (an interval over which the heliocentric distance decreased from 5.1 AU to 0.35 AU), allowing monitoring of the long-term evolution of coma morphology during comet ISON׳s pre-perihelion leg. Data were contributed by observers spread around the world, resulting in particularly good temporal coverage during November when comet ISON was brightest but its visibility was limited from any one location due to the small solar elongation. We analyze the northwestern sunward continuum coma feature observed in comet ISON during the first half of 2013, finding that it was likely present from at least February through May and did not show variations on diurnal time scales. From these images we constrain the grain velocities to ~10 m s−1, and we find that the grains spent 2–4 weeks in the sunward side prior to merging with the dust tail. We present a rationale for the lack of continuum coma features from September until mid-November 2013, determining that if the feature from the first half of 2013 was present, it was likely too small to be clearly detected. We also analyze the continuum coma morphology observed subsequent to the November 12 outburst, and constrain the first appearance of new features in the continuum to later than November 13.99 UT

Telomere-to-telomere assembly of a complete human X chromosome

After two decades of improvements, the current human reference genome (GRCh38) is the most accurate and complete vertebrate genome ever produced. However, no single chromosome has been finished end to end, and hundreds of unresolved gaps persist1,2. Here we present a human genome assembly that surpasses the continuity of GRCh382, along with a gapless, telomere-to-telomere assembly of a human chromosome. This was enabled by high-coverage, ultra-long-read nanopore sequencing of the complete hydatidiform mole CHM13 genome, combined with complementary technologies for quality improvement and validation. Focusing our efforts on the human X chromosome3, we reconstructed the centromeric satellite DNA array (approximately 3.1 Mb) and closed the 29 remaining gaps in the current reference, including new sequences from the human pseudoautosomal regions and from cancer-testis ampliconic gene families (CT-X and GAGE). These sequences will be integrated into future human reference genome releases. In addition, the complete chromosome X, combined with the ultra-long nanopore data, allowed us to map methylation patterns across complex tandem repeats and satellite arrays. Our results demonstrate that finishing the entire human genome is now within reach, and the data presented here will facilitate ongoing efforts to complete the other human chromosomes