The Mid-America Law School Library Consortium Catalog on CD-ROM

The Mid-America Law School Library Consortium celebrated the tenth anniversary of its founding in 1991. Although preceded by informal meetings of law school deans and librarians in the late 1970s, the Consortium was formally constituted in 1981 as a regional group of law school libraries interested primarily in slowing the rise of expenses through greater cooperation and resource sharing. At the time the Union Catalog project was beginning, the group consisted of eighteen institutions in seven states. The Consortium included all accredited law schools in six of the seven states represented. [1] The guiding philosophy of cooperation and resource sharing has taken several concrete forms over the past decade. From the outset, free interlibrary loan and photocopying were stressed. Several initial projects were fairly modest, albeit labor intensive. These included the compilation and distribution of union lists of audiovisual materials, microform holdings, and a list of primary Canadian materials. In the fall of 1982, the Consortium launched its most ambitious project to that time: the Mid-America Law School Library Consortium Union List of Serials on OCLC.[2] Several aspects of that project were to provide the model for later endeavors

MAUL: An OCLC Union List of Legal Periodicals

The Mid-America Law School Library Consortium is an incorporated association of eighteen academic law libraries formed in 1980 to promote cooperation among its members. The organization includes libraries in Arkansas, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma. Within the framework of the organization\u27s by-laws, the group engages in such varied cooperative activities as telefacsimile document delivery, collection development, staff exchanges, and union listing. The union list of periodicals on OCLC was authorized by the Consortium directors in June 1982. (Two libraries opted not to participate in the OCLC union list project, leaving sixteen involved.) The four-letter symbol chosen to identify the union list online is MAUL. Off-line union listing was an early activity of the Mid-America Consortium that helped fulfill its resource-sharing goals. A printed union list of microforms and one of looseleaf services have been produced, and a Canadian/Australian list is under development. In early 1982, the library directors of the Consortium became interested in the possibility of using the OCLC union listing capability to create a union list of periodicals. In order to do this, the Consortium had to select a single network through which to join. Eileen Searls, Director of the Saint Louis University Law Library and President of the Consortium, investigated the packages offered by the networks to which the various libraries belonged. Four net-works were possible choices: Amigos, BCR, ILLINET, and MIDLNET. At the Consortium meeting in Detroit in June 1982, the Board of Directors voted to join through Amigos. The Consortium\u27s initial contract with Amigos included one-time costs of $1,500 for training agents at two sites and$34 per hour for profiling. These costs were prorated. The Consortium pays the annual membership fee, which was $739 for sixteen libraries in 1983/84. Each library is billed for the charges associated with local data records directly by its own network. This venture was the first cross-network OCLC union list

Soil properties of bare patches in rangelands of South African's grasslands

A loss of grassy cover accompanied by the development of bare soil patches, are the most notable forms of rangeland degradation in grasslands of South Africa. Concerns are growing over the threat of loss of nutritious perennial grass species and the lack of regrowth of the bare patches. Grazing and different rangeland tenure systems -communal and freehold, which is equal to continuous and rotational grazing system - are considered to be of major importance for rangeland degradation. The continuous grazing system is seen to be more affected, but the development of bare patches is not restricted to communal land. We hypothesized that (1) soil properties of bare patches in South Africa´s grasslands are not different in different tenure systems, and (2) soil properties differ with size of bare patches, where big patches are more degraded. To test this, we sampled soils at communal and commercial land in the Thaba Nchu area of South Africa with the following design: we selected three farms per tenure system, 6 randomly chosen plots (100x100m) per farm, and within these plots we sampled 5 bare patches of different sizes (0-10 cm) per plot, where the soil sample (3 replicates) were taken out of the middle of the bare patch. Additionally, soils of adjacent grass were sampled. The results showed that in total, there were more bare patches in continuous grazing systems, evaluated by aerial pictures, but we couldn´t find any differences in bulk density and carbon stocks, between the tenure systems. Additionally, and surprisingly, we found no significant differences in soil organic carbon stocks between bare soil samples and grass samples. There was no clear relationship between bare patch size and nutrient contents. Other nutrients like phosphor were significantly enlarged at the bare patch compared to the grass samples. According to our results, we conclude, that the bare patches seem to develop in different pathways: i) along tracks of grazing animals, (ii) around termite hills, where the termite construction seems to be an initial starting point of bare patches and (iii) on staying and lying places of the grazing animals, which aslo explain the higher nutrient contents at the bare patches

Reliability and usability of tourism climate indices.

Tourism climate indices (TCI) are commonly used to describe the climate conditions suitable for tourism activities, from the planning, investment or daily operations perspectives. A substantial amount of research has been carried out, in particular with respect to new indices formulae adapted to specific tourism products, and parameters and their weighting, taking into account surveys on the stated preferences of tourists, especially in terms of comfort. This paper illustrates another field of research, which seeks to better understand the different sources of uncertainty associated with indices. Indeed, slight differences in formula thresholds, variations in computation methods, and also the use of multimodel ensembles create nuances that affect the ways in which indices projections are usually presented. Firstly, we assess the impact of differences in preference surveys on the definition of indices thresholds, in particular for thermal comfort. Secondly, we compare computation methods for France, showing the need to better specify detailed data sources and their use to ensure the comparability of results. Thirdly, using multimodel ensembles for the Mediterranean basin, we assess the uncertainty inherent in long-term projections, which are used in modelling the economic impact of climate change. This paper argues in favour of a more cautious use of tourism comfort indices, with more consideration given to the robustness of data (validation, debiasing, uncertainty assessment, etc.) and users’ needs, from the climate services perspective.This paper was written by a team participating in the EU FP7 project CLIM-RUN “Climate Local Information in the Mediterranean region Responding Users Needs” (2011–2014)

Organic matter in termite mounds of an Amazonian rain forest.

This study investigates how termites alter the organic matter in rain forests near Manaus, Brazil. Samples were collected from the outer and inner parts of typical termite nests of Nasutitermes, Termes, Embiratermes, Cornitermes, Anoplotermes, and Constrictotermes genera, as well as from the surrounding topsoil (0cm-10cm) and potential wooden food. The termite nests were signficant sinks for organic matter and its associated nutrients. The organic C contents ranged between 100g kg-1 and 500g kg-1 in the nests, compared to 17g kg-1 to 42g kg-1 in the surrounding topsoils. As lignin contents of the mounds were higher than in wood, lignin may be accumulated in preference to other organic compounds. This findings also sugests that the interior part of the nests is a region of higher organic matter turnover and lignin degradation

Spatial distribution of organic carbon in the Atacama Desert, Chile

The Atacama Desert in northern Chile is known as the driest region on earth; however traces of life, can still be found. Soils are the habitat and reservoir for plants and microorganisms, which leave their fingerprints as organic residues. Here we identify and quantify organic carbon in soil profiles and along potential plant dispersal corridors in the Atacama Desert. We hypothesize that preferential pathways or barriers of the dispersal of life exist, which can be related to soil properties such as bulk density. We further assume that due to dust and salt accumulation at the surface, in particular the subsoils will reveal an unique though little explored archive of organic matter. The analytical assessment of Corg at very low levels is challenging. It was found that SOC in hyperarid soils ranged from 1.8 – 125 µg C per g soil for 0-1 m (1). We here present an improved Corg analysis, which is based on a temperature gradient method (DIN19539; Soli TOC cube, Elementar, Hanau). This allows combustion of samples with up to 5 g sample weight without the need to remove carbonate. This avoids loss and increases precision of Corg quantification at lowest concentrations. We can show that Corg contents decrease from 1.47 % to 0.1 % in the first 14 km of the gradient. However, first results suggest that within the hyper-arid core of the Atacama Corg contents increase. This gives first hints to the vegetation history of the desert and the dispersal of life

The New Instantaneity: How Social Media are Helping us Privilege the (Politically) Correct over the True

The recent sacking of the eminent scientist Tim Hunt from one of the UK’s leading research institutions is only the latest in a series of cases where public individuals have been derided for comments made in jest on social media, with serious consequences for their professional and personal lives. This article discusses the case of Tim Hunt as an example of the extent to which the privileging of the correct over the true which has long pervaded media discourse is taken to the extreme by the instant-response culture of social media. It points to the emergence of a new form of instantaneity enabled by these networked forms of communication that serves to reinforce systemic inaction rather than the change widely associated with these technologies. It draws on philosophy and Critical Theory as useful conceptual frameworks for highlighting the ways in which Twitter & co. increasingly call us to action but crowd out thought, thereby passing over opportunities for real social change

Der Austausch von Sauerstoffisotopen zwischen Phosphat und Wasser in Modellsystemen und Böden - neue Einblicke mit Raman Spektroskopie

Das Isotopenverhältnis (O-18/O-16) in Phosphat (PO43-) kann als Tracer von biogeochemischen Prozessen in terrestrischen und aquatischen Ökosystemen genutzt werden. Bei Temperaturen unter 70°C ist die Phosphoanhydridbindung stabil aber die Aktivität von Enzymen kann den Austausch von Sauerstoffisotopen zwischen Phosphat und Wasser katalysieren. Insbesondere die intrazelluläre Pyrophosphatase führt zu einem kompletten Austausch von Sauerstoff zwischen PO43- und H2O. Dieser biochemische Prozess ist sehr wichtig, da er in allen lebenden Zellen stattfindet und somit Aufschluss darüber geben kann, ob bodenbürtiges Phosphat Teil des biologischen Kreislaufs war oder nicht. Die Extraktion und Aufreinigung von anorganischem Phosphat aus Böden vor der Messung mit einem Isotopenmassenspektrometer (IRMS) ist allerdings teuer und sehr zeit- und arbeitsintensiv. Aus diesem Grund arbeiten wir an der Entwicklung einer alternativen Methode mit dem Einsatz von Raman-Spektroskopie. In einem Modellsystem konnten wir erfolgreich die Kinetik des enzym-katalysierten Sauerstoffisotopenaustausches bestimmen. Kleine Veränderungen der Protein- und Cofaktorkonzentrationen (MgCl2) hatten einen starken Einfluss auf die Reaktionsgeschwindigkeit. Zusätzlich präsentieren wir erste Resultate über die Anwendungsmöglichkeiten dieser Technologie in natürlichen Systemen, wie zum Beispiel in Fließgewässern oder in Böden