Who’s in Charge? The Role of Power in Collaborative Governance and Forest Management.

Collaborative processes for working toward common management goals between individuals and organizations, despite their differences, emerged as one enduring legacy resulting from the Timber Wars in the American West during the late-1980s and the early 1990s. Power imbalances are often cited as a common problem in collaborative processes and can have a lasting, deleterious impact on the collaborative process and its outcomes. For all its importance, however, there is a yet unfulfilled need to understand the extent to which power and power imbalances affect collaborative relationships. Our research uses a case study approach to qualitatively analyze power dynamics within three collaborative efforts comprised of the United States Forest Service and community stakeholders. We identified four sources of power in play within the three case studies examined to include authority, resources, discursive legitimacy, and trust. We also discuss the application of these power sources and the ensuing outcomes. These powers, and the imbalance that sometimes result from their application, are representative of some of the underlying tensions that can be present in collaborative processes

The OGF-OGFr axis utilizes the p21 pathway to restrict progression of human pancreatic cancer

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Pancreatic cancer is the 4th leading cause of death from cancer in the U.S. The opioid growth factor (OGF; [Met⁵]-enkephalin) and the OGF receptor form an inhibitory growth regulatory system involved in the pathogenesis and treatment of pancreatic cancer. The OGF-OGFr axis influences the G₀/G₁phase of the cell cycle. In this investigation, we elucidate the pathway of OGF in the cell cycle.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Using BxPC-3 cells, OGF decreased phosphorylation of retinoblastoma (Rb) protein without changing total Rb. This change was correlated with reduced cyclin-dependent kinase protein (Cdk) 2 kinase activity, but not total Cdk2. OGF treatment increased cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor (CKI) p21 protein expression in comparison to controls, as well levels of p21 complexed with Cdk2. Naloxone abolished the increased expression of p21 protein by OGF, suggesting a receptor-mediated activity. p21 specific siRNAs blocked OGF's repressive action on proliferation in BxPC-3, PANC-1, and Capan-2 cells; cells transfected with negative control siRNA had no alteration in p21 expression, and therefore were inhibited by OGF.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These data are the first to reveal that the target of cell proliferative inhibitory action of OGF in human pancreatic cancer is a p21 CKI pathway, expanding strategies for diagnosis and treatment of these neoplasias.</p

Dynamics of a Disturbed Sessile Drop Measured by Atomic Force Microscopy (AFM)

A new method for studying the dynamics of a sessile drop by atomic force microscopy (AFM) is demonstrated. A hydrophobic microsphere (radius, r 20–30 μm) is brought into contact with a small sessile water drop resting on a polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) surface. When the microsphere touches the liquid surface, the meniscus rises onto it because of capillary forces. Although the microsphere volume is 6 orders of magnitude smaller than the drop, it excites the normal resonance modes of the liquid interface. The sphere is pinned at the interface, whose small (<100 nm) oscillations are readily measured with AFM. Resonance oscillation frequencies were measured for drop volumes between 5 and 200 μL. The results for the two lowest normal modes are quantitatively consistent with continuum calculations for the natural frequency of hemispherical drops with no adjustable parameters. The method may enable sensitive measurements of volume, surface tension, and viscosity of small drop

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish II: Characterization of Spectral Structure with Electromagnetic Simulations and its science Implications

We use time-domain electromagnetic simulations to determine the spectral characteristics of the Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Arrays (HERA) antenna. These simulations are part of a multi-faceted campaign to determine the effectiveness of the dish's design for obtaining a detection of redshifted 21 cm emission from the epoch of reionization. Our simulations show the existence of reflections between HERA's suspended feed and its parabolic dish reflector that fall below -40 dB at 150 ns and, for reasonable impedance matches, have a negligible impact on HERA's ability to constrain EoR parameters. It follows that despite the reflections they introduce, dishes are effective for increasing the sensitivity of EoR experiments at relatively low cost. We find that electromagnetic resonances in the HERA feed's cylindrical skirt, which is intended to reduce cross coupling and beam ellipticity, introduces significant power at large delays ($-40$ dB at 200 ns) which can lead to some loss of measurable Fourier modes and a modest reduction in sensitivity. Even in the presence of this structure, we find that the spectral response of the antenna is sufficiently smooth for delay filtering to contain foreground emission at line-of-sight wave numbers below $k_\parallel \lesssim 0.2$ $h$Mpc$^{-1}$, in the region where the current PAPER experiment operates. Incorporating these results into a Fisher Matrix analysis, we find that the spectral structure observed in our simulations has only a small effect on the tight constraints HERA can achieve on parameters associated with the astrophysics of reionization.Comment: Accepted to ApJ, 18 pages, 17 Figures. Replacement matches accepted manuscrip

Enhancing Lay Counselor Capacity to Improve Patient Outcomes with Multimedia Technology

Multimedia technologies offer powerful tools to increase capacity of health workers to deliver standardized, effective, and engaging antiretroviral medication adherence counseling. Masivukeni—is an innovative multimedia-based, computer-driven, lay counselor-delivered intervention designed to help people living with HIV in resource-limited settings achieve optimal adherence. This pilot study examined medication adherence and key psychosocial outcomes among 55 non-adherent South African HIV+ patients, on antiretroviral therapy (ART) for at least 6 months, who were randomized to receive either Masivukeni or standard of care (SOC) counseling for ART non-adherence. At baseline, there were no significant differences between the SOC and Masivukeni groups on any outcome variables. At post-intervention (approximately 5–6 weeks after baseline), -clinic-based pill count adherence data available for 20 participants (10 per intervention arm) showed a 10 % improvement for—participants and a decrease of 8 % for SOC participants. Masivukeni participants reported significantly more positive attitudes towards disclosure and medication social support, less social rejection, and better clinic–patient relationships than did SOC participants. Masivukeni shows promise to promote optimal adherence and provides preliminary evidence that multimedia, computer-based technology can help lay counselors offer better adherence counseling than standard approaches

Superconductivity in Fluorine-Arsenide Sr_{1-x}La_xFeAsF

Since the discovery of superconductivity\cite{1} at 26 K in oxy-pnictide $LaFeAsO_{1-x}F_x$, enormous interests have been stimulated in the fields of condensed matter physics and material sciences. Among the five different structures in this broad type of superconductors\cite{2,3,4,5,6}, the ZrCuSiAs structure has received special attention since the $T_c$ has been quickly promoted to 55-56 K\cite{7,8,9,10,11} in fluorine doped oxy-pnictides REFeAsO (RE = rare earth elements). The superconductivity can also be induced by applying a high pressure to the undoped samples\cite{12,13}. The mechanism of superconductivity in the FeAs-based system remains unclear yet, but it turns out to be clear that any change to the structure or the building blocks will lead to a change of the superconducting transition temperatures. In this Letter, we report the fabrication of the new family of compounds, namely fluorine-arsenides DvFeAsF (Dv = divalent metals) with the ZrCuSiAs structure and with the new building block DvF instead of the REO (both the layers DvF and REO have the combined cation state of "+1"). The undoped parent phase has a Spin-Density-Wave like transition at about 173 K for SrFeAsF, 118 K for CaFeAsF and 153 K for EuFeAsF. By doping electrons into the system the resistivity anomaly associated with this SDW transition is suppressed and superconductivity appears at 32 K in the fluorine-arsenide Sr$_{1-x}$La$_x$FeAsF (x = 0.4). Our discovery here initiates a new method to obtain superconductors in the FeAs-based system.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, typos added, references added, and one figure adde

Isostructural Mott transition in 2D honeycomb antiferromagnet V 0.9 PS 3

Abstract: The MPX3 family of magnetic van-der-Waals materials (M denotes a first row transition metal and X either S or Se) are currently the subject of broad and intense attention for low-dimensional magnetism and transport and also for novel device and technological applications, but the vanadium compounds have until this point not been studied beyond their basic properties. We present the observation of an isostructural Mott insulator–metal transition in van-der-Waals honeycomb antiferromagnet V0.9PS3 through high-pressure x-ray diffraction and transport measurements. We observe insulating variable-range-hopping type resistivity in V0.9PS3, with a gradual increase in effective dimensionality with increasing pressure, followed by a transition to a metallic resistivity temperature dependence between 112 and 124 kbar. The metallic state additionally shows a low-temperature upturn we tentatively attribute to the Kondo effect. A gradual structural distortion is seen between 26 and 80 kbar, but no structural change at higher pressures corresponding to the insulator–metal transition. We conclude that the insulator–metal transition occurs in the absence of any distortions to the lattice—an isostructural Mott transition in a new class of two-dimensional material, and in strong contrast to the behavior of the other MPX3 compounds

Effect of tapered roller bearing supports on the dynamic behaviour of hypoid gear pair differentials

Noise and vibration refinement and energy efficiency are the key drivers in powertrain development. The final drive (the differential) is a source of vibration concern and also contributes to the powertrain inefficiency. To optimise differential characteristics for the key objectives of refinement and efficiency, detailed models of the gear interactions as well as the support bearing dynamics are required. This study reports the integrated lubricated bearing and gear contacts with an eight-degree-of-freedom dynamic analysis (a tribo-dynamic model). Non-Newtonian shear behaviour of thin lubricant-film conjunctions is taken into account in the integrated tribo-dynamic analysis, which has not hitherto been reported in the literature. The results show that the transmitted vibration spectra from the system onto the differential casing are dominated by the bearing frequencies rather than by those due to the meshing of gears. It is also shown that a sufficiently high bearing preload improves the vibration refinement but can lead to a marginally reduced transmission efficiency

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array Dish I: Beam Pattern Measurements and Science Implications

The Hydrogen Epoch of Reionization Array (HERA) is a radio interferometer aiming to detect the power spectrum of 21 cm fluctuations from neutral hydrogen from the Epoch of Reionization (EOR). Drawing on lessons from the Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) and the Precision Array for Probing the Epoch of Reionization (PAPER), HERA is a hexagonal array of large (14 m diameter) dishes with suspended dipole feeds. Not only does the dish determine overall sensitivity, it affects the observed frequency structure of foregrounds in the interferometer. This is the first of a series of four papers characterizing the frequency and angular response of the dish with simulations and measurements. We focus in this paper on the angular response (i.e., power pattern), which sets the relative weighting between sky regions of high and low delay, and thus, apparent source frequency structure. We measure the angular response at 137 MHz using the ORBCOMM beam mapping system of Neben et al. We measure a collecting area of 93 m^2 in the optimal dish/feed configuration, implying HERA-320 should detect the EOR power spectrum at z~9 with a signal-to-noise ratio of 12.7 using a foreground avoidance approach with a single season of observations, and 74.3 using a foreground subtraction approach. Lastly we study the impact of these beam measurements on the distribution of foregrounds in Fourier space.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figures. Replaced to match accepted ApJ versio

Bˉ0→π+X\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ X in the Standard Model

In this paper we investigate the possibility of studying $B\to \pi$ form factor using the semi-inclusive decays $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ + X_q$. In general $B\to PX$ semi-inclusive decays involve several hadronic parameters. But for $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ X_q$ decays we find that in the factorization approximation, the only unknown hadronic parameters are the form factors $F^{B\to \pi}_{0,1}$. Therefore these form factors can be studied in $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ X_q$ decays. Using theoretical model calculations for the form factors the branching ratios for $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ X_d(\Delta S = 0)$ and $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ X_s (\Delta S = -1)$, with the cut $E_{\pi} > 2.1$ GeV, are estimated to be in the ranges of $(3.1\sim 4.9) \times 10^{-5}(F^{B\to \pi}_1(0)/0.33)^2$ and $(2.5\sim 4.2)\times 10^{-5}(F_1^{B\to \pi}(0)/0.33)^2$, respectively, depending on the value of $\gamma$. The combined branching ratio for $\bar B^0 \to \pi^+ (X_d+ X_s)$ is about $7.4\times 10^{-5} (F^{B\to \pi}_1(0)/0.33)^2$ and is insensitive to $\gamma$. We also discuss CP asymmetries in these decay modes.Comment: RevTex 8 pages and two figure