A Vegetative Survey of Back-Barrier Islands near Sapelo Island, Georgia

Proceedings of the 2003 Georgia Water Resources Conference, held April 23-24, 2003, at the University of Georgia.This study was designed to examine the forest composition, structure and species richness of vegetation among undeveloped back-barrier islands near Sapelo Island, Georgia. Known colloquially as “marsh hammocks,” back-barrier islands are completely or partially encircled by estuarine saltmarsh. There are upwards of 1200 hammocks along the Georgia coast, comprising approximately 6900 ha. In the face of increased development pressure, the cumulative impacts caused by small-scale construction of homes, roads, bridges, and septic fields may alter natural hydrologic and ecological processes. We surveyed vegetation on 11 undeveloped hammocks in four size classes and found that overall species diversity is low, but the diversity of vascular plants may increase with island size. Local and regional planners and conservation organizations may use this information to help develop land-based projects that are consistent with the sustainable use of coastal resources

Navigation Queries from Triangular Meshes

Abstract. Navigation meshes are commonly employed as a practical represen-tation for path planning and other navigation queries in animated virtual envi-ronments and computer games. This paper explores the use of triangulations as a navigation mesh, and discusses several useful triangulation–based algorithms and operations: environment modeling and validity, automatic agent placement, track-ing moving obstacles, ray–obstacle intersection queries, path planning with arbi-trary clearance, determination of corridors, etc. While several of the addressed queries and operations can be applied to generic triangular meshes, the efficient computation of paths with arbitrary clearance requires a new type of triangular mesh, called a Local Clearance Triangulation, which enables the efficient and correct determination if a disc of arbitrary size can pass through any narrow pas-sages of the mesh. This paper shows that triangular meshes can support the effi-cient computation of several navigation procedures and an implementation of the presented methods is available

New anticoagulants: beyond heparin, low-molecular-weight heparin and warfarin

The limitations of traditional anticoagulants, heparin and warfarin, have prompted the development of new anticoagulant drugs for prevention and treatment of both venous and arterial thromboembolism. After a brief review of thrombogenesis and its regulation, this paper focuses on new anticoagulant agents in more advanced stages of clinical testing