Geologic structure of shallow maria

Isopach maps and structural contour maps of the eastern mare basins (30 deg N to 30 deg S; 0 deg to 100 deg E), constructed from measurements of partially buried craters, are presented and discussed. The data, which are sufficiently scattered to yield gross thickness variations, are restricted to shallow maria with less than 1500-2000 m of mare basalts. The average thickness of basalt in the irregular maria is between 200 and 400 m. Correlations between surface topography, basalt thickness, and basin floor structure are apparent in most of the basins that were studied. The mare surface is commonly depressed in regions of thick mare basalts; mare ridges are typically located in regions of pronounced thickness changes; and arcuate mare rilles are confined to thin mare basalts. Most surface structures are attributed to shallow stresses developed within the mare basalts during consolidation and volume reduction

HB12-1278 Study of the South Platte River alluvial aquifer

December 2013.Includes bibliographical references

Community, Spirit, and Soul in the Lower Ninth Ward

Five years ago, New Orleans was devastated by Hurricane Katrina. Since then, the city has almost made a full recovery; except for the Lower Ninth Ward. Limited efforts to rebuild housing and no consideration for social and community infrastructure made it nearly impossible for former residents to come home. However, the spirit of the Lower Ninth Ward stays alive in the festive Second Line parade culture of the people who continue to come back every weekend to dance down the streets and celebrate with one another, making the public street the symbol of community life. This thesis explores the cultural and social fabric of the Lower Ninth Ward in order to propose an appropriate architectural intervention to function as an epicenter for community life and serve as a catalyst for rebuilding. The design proposition includes an intervention along the neutral ground on Claiborne Avenue with market, bar, performance, and festival spaces across the intersection of Claiborne and Forstall Street. Urban farming plots for the community are allocated along the rest of the neutral ground. To supplement these community spaces, design guidelines are provided for live/work commercial units along part of Claiborne, and housing guidelines are assigned for the remaining blocks along Claiborne and the rest of the Lower Ninth Ward

Frontoparietal representations of task context support the flexible control of goal-directed cognition.

Cognitive control allows stimulus-response processing to be aligned with internal goals and is thus central to intelligent, purposeful behavior. Control is thought to depend in part on the active representation of task information in prefrontal cortex (PFC), which provides a source of contextual bias on perception, decision making, and action. In the present study, we investigated the organization, influences, and consequences of context representation as human subjects performed a cued sorting task that required them to flexibly judge the relationship between pairs of multivalent stimuli. Using a connectivity-based parcellation of PFC and multivariate decoding analyses, we determined that context is specifically and transiently represented in a region spanning the inferior frontal sulcus during context-dependent decision making. We also found strong evidence that decision context is represented within the intraparietal sulcus, an area previously shown to be functionally networked with the inferior frontal sulcus at rest and during task performance. Rule-guided allocation of attention to different stimulus dimensions produced discriminable patterns of activation in visual cortex, providing a signature of top-down bias over perception. Furthermore, demands on cognitive control arising from the task structure modulated context representation, which was found to be strongest after a shift in task rules. When context representation in frontoparietal areas increased in strength, as measured by the discriminability of high-dimensional activation patterns, the bias on attended stimulus features was enhanced. These results provide novel evidence that illuminates the mechanisms by which humans flexibly guide behavior in complex environments

Evaluating Non-Price Water Demand Policies During Severe Droughts

Western states and provinces live under constant drought threat. When and how to time restrictions on outdoor watering are crucial management issues. The effectiveness of various policies is assessed using experience from Colorado during a severe drought.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Utilizing swine effluent on sprinkler-irrigated corn

Presented at the 15th annual Central Plains irrigation conference and exposition proceedings on February 4-5, 2003 at the City Limits Convention Center in Colby, Kansas.Includes bibliographical references.The expansion of large swine production facilities in Colorado prompted a need to evaluate the impact of swine effluent applied on irrigated corn grown on sandy soil. The objectives of this study were to: evaluate the use of swine effluent as a nutrient source for irrigated corn production, evaluate irrigated corn response grown on sandy soils to different application rates, determine NH3 loss during sprinkler application and the 72 hour period following application, and evaluate N movement through the soil profile under swine effluent and commercial-N fertilizer for irrigated conditions. The 5-year study was initiated in 1995 on a 14.5-ha sprinkler-irrigated field planted to grain corn. In 1999, the field experiment was expanded to two other facilities, both having one-stage lagoons to evaluate ammonia volatilization from single stage lagoon effluent. Both swine effluent and commercial-N fertilizer treatments were applied at four N rates labeled, control, low, agronomic, and high. All treatments were replicated three times in a randomized complete block design. Approximately 90% of the total nitrogen from the 2-stage lagoon effluent was in ammoniacal form, and the total dry matter content of the effluent was only 0.1-0.2% by volume. Corn yields increased with the increase of both swine effluent and commercial-N fertilizer rates. In contrast to the swine effluent treatments, significant soil-N buildup was observed at the 1.5 to 3.0 m depths for the commercial-N fertilizer treatments. Higher total N and P plant removal for the swine effluent treatments resulted in little N accumulation below the root zone. As the swine effluent application rate increased, the plant N and P removal and recovery rate increased. Ammonia loss during application ranged from 8 to 27% of the total NH4-N in the effluent due to drift and volatilization, with an average loss of 17%. The range of estimated N loss from the soil within 72 hours of application varied from 24 to 56%, with an average loss of 42% of the NH4-N in the applied effluent. The total N loss from both the sprinkler application and the soil ranged from 33 to 73% of the applied NH4-N, with an average loss of approximately 60%. Effluent N concentration did not significantly impact the percent of N lost, while air temperature and wind speed were significant variables in the percent of N lost

Laminated thermoplastic composite material from recycled high density polyethylene

The design of a materials-science, educational experiment is presented. The student should understand the fundamentals of polymer processing and mechanical property testing of materials. The ability to use American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) standards is also necessary for designing material test specimens and testing procedures. The objectives of the experiment are (1) to understand the concept of laminated composite materials, processing, testing, and quality assurance of thermoplastic composites and (2) to observe an application example of recycled plastics

Irrigated agriculture responds to water use challenges

Presented at Irrigated agriculture responds to water use challenges - strategies for success: USCID water management conference held on April 3-6, 2012 in Austin, Texas.Includes bibliographical references.Population growth and climate variability are increasing pressures on limited water resources, and extensive collaboration is needed to develop long-term working solutions to this complex issue. Agriculture consumes an estimated 90 percent of available water resources in the western U.S., and future water needs for an expanding urban population will likely come from agriculture. Therefore, it is increasingly urgent for farmers, water managers, extension agents, and policy-makers to understand agricultural water conservation methodology, technology, and policy to make informed management decisions. Reliable information on the subject is often not readily available to water users, especially outside of the academic and government communities. The USDA-NIFA Northern Plains and Mountains Regional Water Team (NPM) has addressed the need for increased knowledge, understanding and adoption of agricultural water conservation through an innovative web-based project. The Agricultural Water Conservation Clearinghouse (AWCC) seeks to join communities of practice to collaboratively address the complex issues of agricultural water use. The AWCC is designed as a comprehensive resource for the latest news, research, literature and tools related to agricultural water conservation. The focal point of the AWCC is a library that contains references to published materials populated by Extension specialists, research scientists, and educators, providing a refined bibliographic review of agriculture water conservation grey literature. The Library encompass over 3,600 entries of refereed journal articles, books, reports, theses and dissertations, and conference proceedings. The AWCC has been searched by over 21,000 users since it was unveiled in 2008 and participation continues to grow

Meeting Colorado's future water supply needs: opportunities and challenges associated with potential agricultural water conservation measures

September 2008.Presented by Colorado Agricultural Water Alliance.Includes bibliographical references

Intensive Working Memory Training Produces Functional Changes in Large-scale Frontoparietal Networks

Working memory is central to human cognition, and intensive cognitive training has been shown to expand working memory capacity in a given domain. It remains unknown, however, how the neural systems that support working memory are altered through intensive training to enable the expansion of working memory capacity. We used fMRI to measure plasticity in activations associated with complex working memory before and after 20 days of training. Healthy young adults were randomly assigned to train on either a dual n-back working memory task or a demanding visuospatial attention task. Training resulted in substantial and task-specific expansion of dual n-back abilities accompanied by changes in the relationship between working memory load and activation. Training differentially affected activations in two large-scale frontoparietal networks thought to underlie working memory: the executive control network and the dorsal attention network. Activations in both networks linearly scaled with working memory load before training, but training dissociated the role of the two networks and eliminated this relationship in the executive control network. Load-dependent functional connectivity both within and between these two networks increased following training, and the magnitudes of increased connectivity were positively correlat ed with improvements in task performance. These results provide insight into the adaptive neural systems that underlie large gains in working memory capacity through training.United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Contract W911QY09C0066)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant T90DA022759)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R90DA023427)United States. Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (2014-13121700007