Eolian and Subaqueous Sedimentary Structures of the Devils Island Sandstone, Sand Island, Wisconsin (U.S.A.)

Abstract The Devils Island Sandstone, Northern Wisconsin, U. S. A., is a super-mature quartz arenite (99% quartz) that has been correlated to the Mesoproterozoic Hinckley Sandstone of Minnesota. The depositional environments of rift sediments like the Devils Island Sandstone are not well understood. This study describes sedimentary structures in a ~5 m thick interval of outcrop observed on Sand Island, Wisconsin. The observed sedimentary structures are dune-scale sets of eolian cross-strata, mm pinstripe- lamination, grain flows, adhesion structures, subaqueous ripples, a pustular algal mat, m- scale trough cross-stratification, pinstriped intraclasts, and soft sediment deformation. The studied interval within the Devils Island Sandstone is dominated by eolian strata, but exhibits at least one subaqueous stratigraphic layer. These two types of deposits are interpreted to represent a depositional environment in a barchan dune field subject to occasional flooding and reworking by ephemeral braided streams. These aqueous environments, called wadis, formed under the influence of possibly complex climatic factors operating across a range of timescales, likely including fluctuations in rainfall, atmospheric moisture, and water table elevation

Junior Recital: Josh Inglis, saxophone

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Inglis studies saxophone with Sam Skelton.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/2065/thumbnail.jp

Electric Hydrofoil Board

The electric hydrofoil community has become very popular in recent years with its two major subsections being divided up into those that buy their boards commercially and those that build their own (the DIY community). The commercial boards are extremely expensive and can reach prices of over $12,000. This is the root cause of the rapidly growing DIY community who can build functioning boards for around$3000. Reducing this entry cost has made the sport much more accessible to new members and has allowed both the size of the community and awareness of the sport to increase. For this report the DIY community was analyzed for weak points and major issues or hurdles that they may face. This exposed major safety concerns, and R&D issues as the community lacked the resources and knowledge to solve since each DIY board is a unique build with unique issues. Often, E-Foil boards are built in the fastest manner possible with the cheapest components, adhering to the strict goal of creating an operational device. This creates large gaps in safety for these DIY builds often ignored in favor of speed, battery life, or pricing. Examples of this negligence are, sub-par battery waterproofing, implementing propellers with no duct leaving an exposed blade spinning at several thousand RPM, and potentially utilizing materials that can be dangerous or un-optimized for water sport use. Using Solidworks fluid flow simulations, a duct and propeller system was created that was able to retain 94% of the efficiency of a ductless system while boasting a 30% increase over the open-source duct and propeller used by the community. This explains why the open-source duct is often removed since riders would be experiencing only about 60%-65% of the efficiency as they would without it. To confirm a proof of concept, the designs generated through the duct optimization iteration process were then live tested in water. The results showed that a bad duct design can be dramatically more inefficient creating a device that no longer functions in the water or it can be so efficient that the difference between ducted and un-ducted propeller setups have nearly no noticeable change to the rider’s experience. This report outlines these issues in greater detail, explain how they were solved or mitigated, with the importance of making the findings reproduceable within the community. Further recommendations include iterating on the propeller design to find the optimal E-foil propeller, while referencing back to the duct to ensure the new prop does not require another redesigned duct. This could be iterated any number of times in searching for the best duct-propeller combination

Dynamic restoration and the impact of native versus invasive vegetation on coastal foredune morphodynamics, Lanphere Dunes, California, USA

The Lanphere Dunes, part of the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge, has been the focus of foredune restoration efforts since the 1980s. Efforts have centred around removal of an invasive European beach grass species, Ammophila arenaria, introduced in the early 1900s to stabilize the dunes to protect landward communities from coastal flooding and storm surges. Despite effectively stabilizing the foredune, A. arenaria forms monotypic vegetation stands, with highly dense roots, rhizomes, and above-ground biomass that can lead to pronounced scarping of the seaward slope, alongshore steering of wind and sediment, a lack of landward transfer of sand, and a steeper, more peaked profile. Effective foredune restoration must consider the coupled interactions between dominant plant type and the geomorphic processes that influence dune form. A 5 ha reach of recently restored foredune was monitored biannually with terrestrial laser scanner and uncrewed aerial systems platforms between 2015 and 2021 to characterize the impacts of dynamic restoration on foredune form and resiliency. This reach included two control plots: (1) native, non-restored and (2) invasive, and three restored plots revegetated with native species: (3) a native grass (Elymus mollis), (4) a low-lying herb and subshrub assemblage, and (5) a mixture of the native grass, herbs, and subshrubs. After five growing seasons, restored plots exhibited distinct geomorphic and sediment budget differences. Natively vegetated plots recovered from extensive scarping 2 years faster than the invasive plot. Restored plots saw foredune height (0.5–0.7 m) and width increase, landward extension (1 m) while maintaining a similar seaward position, and positive lee-slope sediment budgets that exceeded both control plots. These results suggest that the native vegetation plots allowed increased landward sand transport across the foredune, and increased the capacity of the foredune to recover more quickly following dune scarping

Low Reproductive Success of Mallards in a Grassland-Dominated Landscape in The Sandhills of Nebraska

The Sandhills of Nebraska comprise approximately 5,000,000 ha of native grassland interspersed with numerous groundwater-fed wetlands. A substantial population of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) nests in this region. Previous investigations of nest survival probability of ducks in the Sandhills have estimated surprisingly low rates of nest survival for a grassland-dominated landscape. These investigations were conducted on public lands and most nest searching took place near wetlands where activity of nest predators might be highest. We predicted that mallards would nest at varying distances from wetlands and that survival probability of a representative sample of duck nests would increase with distance from wetlands. We decoy-trapped and radio-marked 71 female mallards, 32 during the 2005 nesting season and 39 during the 2006 nesting season, and monitored their individual choice of nest habitats, their survival during the nesting season, and survival of their nests. Mallards nested in various habitats, both near and far from wetlands. Nest survival probability (Ö = 0.03, SE = 0.02) was low relative to other studies regardless of distance to wetlands. Survival of females during the nesting season (Ö = 0.84, SE = 0.08), however, was high relative to other studies. This pattern could have resulted from the combination of a diverse community of nest predators, few predators of nesting females, and a population of largely second year females that put little effort into nesting

Low Reproductive Success of Mallards in a Grassland-Dominated Landscape in The Sandhills of Nebraska

The Sandhills of Nebraska comprise approximately 5,000,000 ha of native grassland interspersed with numerous groundwater-fed wetlands. A substantial population of the mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) nests in this region. Previous investigations of nest survival probability of ducks in the Sandhills have estimated surprisingly low rates of nest survival for a grassland-dominated landscape. These investigations were conducted on public lands and most nest searching took place near wetlands where activity of nest predators might be highest. We predicted that mallards would nest at varying distances from wetlands and that survival probability of a representative sample of duck nests would increase with distance from wetlands. We decoy-trapped and radio-marked 71 female mallards, 32 during the 2005 nesting season and 39 during the 2006 nesting season, and monitored their individual choice of nest habitats, their survival during the nesting season, and survival of their nests. Mallards nested in various habitats, both near and far from wetlands. Nest survival probability (Ö = 0.03, SE = 0.02) was low relative to other studies regardless of distance to wetlands. Survival of females during the nesting season (Ö = 0.84, SE = 0.08), however, was high relative to other studies. This pattern could have resulted from the combination of a diverse community of nest predators, few predators of nesting females, and a population of largely second year females that put little effort into nesting

LCOGT Network Observatory Operations

We describe the operational capabilities of the Las Cumbres Observatory Global Telescope Network. We summarize our hardware and software for maintaining and monitoring network health. We focus on methodologies to utilize the automated system to monitor availability of sites, instruments and telescopes, to monitor performance, permit automatic recovery, and provide automatic error reporting. The same jTCS control system is used on telescopes of apertures 0.4m, 0.8m, 1m and 2m, and for multiple instruments on each. We describe our network operational model, including workloads, and illustrate our current tools, and operational performance indicators, including telemetry and metrics reporting from on-site reductions. The system was conceived and designed to establish effective, reliable autonomous operations, with automatic monitoring and recovery - minimizing human intervention while maintaining quality. We illustrate how far we have been able to achieve that.Comment: 13 pages, 9 figure

The Beat Generation

Program for the tenth annual RISD Cabaret held in the Waterman Building, top floor coinciding with the fiftieth anniversary of the year when Allen Ginsburg, William Burroughs and Jack Kerouac first met and started a movement which changed the face of postwar American and influenced the 1960s as well as the subculture of the \u2770s and \u2780s. Program, poster and tickets designed by Antoinette le Vaillant.https://digitalcommons.risd.edu/liberalarts_cabaret_programs/1012/thumbnail.jp

Pan-Cancer Analysis of lncRNA Regulation Supports Their Targeting of Cancer Genes in Each Tumor Context

Long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) are commonly dys-regulated in tumors, but only a handful are known toplay pathophysiological roles in cancer. We inferredlncRNAs that dysregulate cancer pathways, onco-genes, and tumor suppressors (cancer genes) bymodeling their effects on the activity of transcriptionfactors, RNA-binding proteins, and microRNAs in5,185 TCGA tumors and 1,019 ENCODE assays.Our predictions included hundreds of candidateonco- and tumor-suppressor lncRNAs (cancerlncRNAs) whose somatic alterations account for thedysregulation of dozens of cancer genes and path-ways in each of 14 tumor contexts. To demonstrateproof of concept, we showed that perturbations tar-geting OIP5-AS1 (an inferred tumor suppressor) andTUG1 and WT1-AS (inferred onco-lncRNAs) dysre-gulated cancer genes and altered proliferation ofbreast and gynecologic cancer cells. Our analysis in-dicates that, although most lncRNAs are dysregu-lated in a tumor-specific manner, some, includingOIP5-AS1, TUG1, NEAT1, MEG3, and TSIX, synergis-tically dysregulate cancer pathways in multiple tumorcontexts

Pan-cancer Alterations of the MYC Oncogene and Its Proximal Network across the Cancer Genome Atlas

Although theMYConcogene has been implicated incancer, a systematic assessment of alterations ofMYC, related transcription factors, and co-regulatoryproteins, forming the proximal MYC network (PMN),across human cancers is lacking. Using computa-tional approaches, we define genomic and proteo-mic features associated with MYC and the PMNacross the 33 cancers of The Cancer Genome Atlas.Pan-cancer, 28% of all samples had at least one ofthe MYC paralogs amplified. In contrast, the MYCantagonists MGA and MNT were the most frequentlymutated or deleted members, proposing a roleas tumor suppressors.MYCalterations were mutu-ally exclusive withPIK3CA,PTEN,APC,orBRAFalterations, suggesting that MYC is a distinct onco-genic driver. Expression analysis revealed MYC-associated pathways in tumor subtypes, such asimmune response and growth factor signaling; chro-matin, translation, and DNA replication/repair wereconserved pan-cancer. This analysis reveals insightsinto MYC biology and is a reference for biomarkersand therapeutics for cancers with alterations ofMYC or the PMN