Effect of initial conditions on deduced atmosphere for Uranus and Jupiter entries

Atmosphere reconstruction based on the data from a probe is discussed in terms of the effect of errors in entry velocity and entry flight path angle on the determination of density, pressure, and temperature as functions of altitude. Emphasis is placed on Uranus and Jupiter entries, although Saturn entries are included

Kirk Broders Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences, COLSA, travels to Mexico

I was able to make my first trip to central Mexico in August 2014, in part due to assistance from the CIE Development Grant, in order to conduct research and develop a collaborative network with agricultural scientists in Mexico. The main purpose of the travel was to initiate a new line of research focused on the evolution of plant-associated microbes with a specific focus on documenting the effect plant domestication has on the associated microbiome of a particular species the common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris). Central Mexico is an ideal place to study this phenomenon as it is the center of origin of bean, maize, and pepper, which are now grown extensively in the United States and globally. Interestingly enough, a species native to the northeastern U.S., blackberry, is now grown extensively in the central Mexican state of Michoacán to satisfy U.S. markets during the winter months. The main focus of this trip was to sample research plots that had been established by collaborators earlier in the year,as well as cultivate new contacts with Mexican scientists and students who I may collaborate with in the future

Climate change: carbon losses in the Alps

The response of the terrestrial carbon cycle to global change is one of the main uncertainties in current climate change predictions1. Most terrestrial carbon is held in soils as organic matter derived from the decay of plant material (Fig. 1). Soil organic matter accounts for roughly three times more carbon than living vegetation, and for more carbon than vegetation and the atmosphere combined. Because elevated atmospheric CO2 concentrations have a fertilizing effect on plant growth, anthropogenic CO2 emissions have triggered increases in the land carbon sink2. However, models predict that other factors — such as water and nutrients — will eventually become limiting to plant growth, and hence to the land carbon sink. In contrast, the turnover of soil organic matter producing CO2 is expected to increase as the Earth warms. As a result, simulations using coupled carbon–climate models predict that the land surface will become a net source of CO2 before the end of the century, leading to a feedback loop between climate and soil carbon losses: increased emissions of CO2 from soil organic matter will lead to enhanced warming, which may then feedback to cause further soil organic matter losses. Prietzel and colleagues3, writing in Nature Geoscience, now provide evidence that warming has already caused a decline in soil organic matter in the German Alps

CANADIAN BACKGROUND AND DESCRIPTION

Agricultural and Food Policy,

A path-finding algorithm for an unmanned roving vehicle

Pathfinding algorithm for unmanned roving vehicle to explore Martian surfac

A heuristic-based approach to code-smell detection

Encapsulation and data hiding are central tenets of the object oriented paradigm. Deciding what data and behaviour to form into a class and where to draw the line between its public and private details can make the difference between a class that is an understandable, flexible and reusable abstraction and one which is not. This decision is a difficult one and may easily result in poor encapsulation which can then have serious implications for a number of system qualities. It is often hard to identify such encapsulation problems within large software systems until they cause a maintenance problem (which is usually too late) and attempting to perform such analysis manually can also be tedious and error prone. Two of the common encapsulation problems that can arise as a consequence of this decomposition process are data classes and god classes. Typically, these two problems occur together – data classes are lacking in functionality that has typically been sucked into an over-complicated and domineering god class. This paper describes the architecture of a tool which automatically detects data and god classes that has been developed as a plug-in for the Eclipse IDE. The technique has been evaluated in a controlled study on two large open source systems which compare the tool results to similar work by Marinescu, who employs a metrics-based approach to detecting such features. The study provides some valuable insights into the strengths and weaknesses of the two approache