Intimacy in infrastructure

This thesis employs public transit to establish regional reclamations of infrastructure, empowering cultural identities through a vernacular that is realized and matured into the capacity of today. The decaying state of our mass transit infrastructure is due to a decline of community ownership and regional identity represented in their architecture. “Communities” can be considered cities, neighborhoods, towns, or entire regions of States depending on the scale of the infrastructure. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania clearly exhibits the range of this decline. A city that went from being the center of the Pennsylvania Railroad, now is sprinkled with infrastructural shells of the past. These sites now provide an opportunity revitalization of the communities they inhabit

Pharyngitis

This issue of eMedRef provides information to clinicians on the pathophysiology, diagnosis, and therapeutics of pharyngitis

Board Involvement in Fundraising

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: The topic of board participation in fundraising has been the object of extensive discussion but little systematic research. This study used a correlational design to examine the relationship of board involvement in fundraising to board recruitment, orientation, and. training; agency demographics; and the characteristics of board members. The study also examined the attitudes of board members toward their agencies and toward fundraising. The data were gathered through an anonymous survey questionnaire completed by 274 board members (62% response rate) of 30 randomly selected health and human service agencies in Santa Clara County. It was found that emphasizing or mentioning the board\u27s responsibility for fundraising during recruitment was associated with increased board involvement in fundraising. Orientation procedures were not related. A small relationship was found between board participation in fundraising and training about the board\u27s role in fundraising and governance. The value systems and experiences of board members were among the strongest indicators of fundraising involvement. Altruistic motives were linked to fundraising participation, as was service on other boards that expected fundraising involvement. Board involvement in fundraising also was related to the agency\u27s fundraising structure. Increased board participation was associated with the presence of part-time development staff, a fundraising committee, and business activities. Decreased board involvement in fundraising was associated with (a) an auxiliary or volunteer group that did fundraising and (b) fundraising by the executive director; this was an unexpected finding. The study was supported in part by a Ford Foundation grant administered by the Institute for Nonprofit Organization Management at the University of San Francisco

Questing the Beast: From Malory to Milton

The Questing Beast is a Medieval creature that has received little scholarly attention. Because of her labile nature, she is difficult to identify and therefore challenging to study. When previously analyzed, she has been considered only in her Medieval context. By comparing the Questing Beast from Perlesvaus, the Post-Vulgate Cycle, and the Prose Tristan, four identifying characteristics can be found: she is symbolic, she is multi-formed, she is a mother that gives birth, and she produces a barking noise most often made by her unborn young. Of these four signs, the last is the most prevalent and identifiable. Using these traits and exploring the impact of Malory\u27s Le Morte d\u27Arthur on post-Medieval authors, three developmentally important Renaissance Beast can be identified. Through comparison and critical analysis there is evidence that Errour and the Blatant Beast from Spenser\u27s The Faerie Queene and Sin from Milton\u27s Paradise Lost are descendants of the Medieval Beast. Her presence in Malory, Spenser, and Milton provides an unexplored link between Malory and Milton that opens Miltonian studies to further analysis through a Medieval lens. The Beast develops into an important character during the Renaissance, which allows her to influence Modern Arthurian authors and helps prove the importance of the Renaissance Questing Beasts and her continued prevalence in literature

Genetic and phenotypic variation of the equine infectious anemia virus surface unit envelope glycoprotein during disease progression

Lentiviruses are single-stranded RNA viruses generally associated with chronic diseases of the immune and central nervous systems. In contrast to the insidious, progressive nature of most lentiviral diseases, equine infectious anemia virus (EIAV) infection results in rapid onset of a variable disease course in equids. Acute disease is accompanied with high-titered viremia, thrombocytopenia, fever, depression, and inappetance. The chronic stage is usually characterized by recurrent episodes of disease. Equids that survive recurrent disease episodes progress to the inapparent stage of disease where no clinical signs are evident; however, there is persistent, ongoing virus replication. Lentiviruses exist within the host as a population of closely related genotypes, termed a quasispecies. Variation in the virus surface unit envelope glycoprotein (SU) has been demonstrated to contribute to immune evasion of host responses during chronic disease. However, little is known about the SU genotypes and phenotypes associated with disease progression to the inapparent stage of disease. The goal of this research is a genotypic and phenotypic characterization of the SU quasispecies during clinical and inapparent stages of disease. To accomplish this goal, I undertook a longitudinal study of SU variation in a pony experimentally inoculated with the virulent, wild-type, EIAVWyo. There was a marked increase in quasispecies diversity and divergence that coincided with maturation of the immune response and progression to the inapparent stage of disease. Variation was characterized by point mutations in each SU variable region as well as deletion/insertions within the principal neutralizing domain (PND). Genotypes representative of predominant PND variants were used to construct chimeric proviral clones for virus neutralization assays. A type-specific virus neutralizing antibody response was associated with resolution of acute disease. Variants predominant at later stages of disease showed increasing resistance to both type- and group-specific neutralizing antibody. Variants most resistant to group-specific antibody showed reduced replication fitness in vitro. These studies provide evidence that neutralizing antibody selects for resistant SU variants and thereby plays an important role in immune control of virus replication during the inapparent stage of disease

On the multiple ecological roles of water in river networks

The distribution and movement of water can influence the state and dynamics of terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems through a diversity of mechanisms. These mechanisms can be organized into three general categories wherein water acts as (1) a resource or habitat for biota, (2) a vector for connectivity and exchange of energy, materials, and organisms, and (3) as an agent of geomorphic change and disturbance. These latter two roles are highlighted in current models, which emphasize hydrologic connectivity and geomorphic change as determinants of the spatial and temporal distributions of species and processes in river systems. Water availability, on the other hand, has received less attention as a driver of ecological pattern, despite the prevalence of intermittent streams, and strong potential for environmental change to alter the spatial extent of drying in many regions. Here we summarize long-term research from a Sonoran Desert watershed to illustrate how spatial patterns of ecosystem structure and functioning reflect shifts in the relative importance of different 'roles of water' across scales of drainage size. These roles are distributed and interact hierarchically in the landscape, and for the bulk of the drainage network it is the duration of water availability that represents the primary determinant of ecological processes. Only for the largest catchments, with the most permanent flow regimes, do flood-associated disturbances and hydrologic exchange emerge as important drivers of local dynamics. While desert basins represent an extreme case, the diversity of mechanisms by which the availability and flow of water influence ecosystem structure and functioning are general. Predicting how river ecosystems may respond to future environmental pressures will require clear understanding of how changes in the spatial extent and relative overlap of these different roles of water shape ecological patterns. © 2013 Sponseller et al

The emerging role of drought as a regulator of dissolved organic carbon in boreal landscapes

One likely consequence of global climate change is an increased frequency and intensity of droughts at high latitudes. Here we use a 17-year record from 13 nested boreal streams to examine direct and lagged effects of summer drought on the quantity and quality of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) inputs from catchment soils. Protracted periods of drought reduced DOC concentrations in all catchments but also led to large stream DOC pulses upon rewetting. Concurrent changes in DOC optical properties and chemical character suggest that seasonal drying and rewetting trigger soil processes that alter the forms of carbon supplied to streams. Contrary to expectations, clearest drought effects were observed in larger watersheds, whereas responses were most muted in smaller, peatland-dominated catchments. Collectively, our results indicate that summer drought causes a fundamental shift in the seasonal distribution of DOC concentrations and character, which together operate as primary controls over the ecological and biogeochemical functioning of northern aquatic ecosystems.Long-term records from boreal streams indicate strong seasonal redistributions of dissolved organic carbon concentrations and quality linked to the severity of summer drought condition

From legacy effects of acid deposition in boreal streams to future environmental threats

Few environmental issues have resulted in such a heated policy-science controversy in Sweden as the 1990s acidification debate in the north of the country. The belief that exceptionally high stream acidity levels during hydrological events was caused by anthropogenic deposition resulted in a governmentally funded, multi-million dollar surface-water liming program. This program was heavily criticized by a large part of the scientific community arguing that the acidity of northern streams was primarily caused by naturally occurring organic acids. Here, we revisit the acid deposition legacy in northern Sweden two decades after the culmination of the controversy by examining the long-term water chemistry trends in the Svartberget/Krycklan research catchment that became a nexus for the Swedish debate. In this reference stream, trends in acidic episodes do show a modest recovery that matches declines in acid deposition to pre-industrial levels, although stream acidity continues to be overwhelmingly driven by organic acidity. Yet there are legacies of acid deposition related to calcium losses from soils, which are more pronounced than anticipated. Finally, assessment of these trends are becoming increasingly complicated by new changes and threats to water resources that must be recognized to avoid unnecessary, expensive, and potentially counterproductive measures to adapt and mitigate human influences. Here we make the argument that while the acidification era is ending, climate change, land-use transitions, and long-range transport of other contaminants warrant close monitoring in the decades to come