An Analysis Of Providers\u27 Practices Regarding Smoking Cessation

Clinical guidelines are the basis of any primary care setting. They were developed in order to give the healthcare provider access to information regarding screening, assistance, and management of certain ailments. Smoking cessation education is among the many clinical guidelines. Smoking is also among the modifiable risk factors for many diseases, including heart disease and cancer. A nonexperimental, ex post facto chart review was used to evaluate if healthcare professionals provided and documented smoking cessation education. A random sample o f (N=200) patients’ charts were selected at a clinic site in Northeast Mississippi. The purpose o f the study was to examine tobacco dependent patients’ charts to evaluate if healthcare providers implemented smoking cessation education and documented the health promoting behavior in accordance with the standards of care. The researchers discovered a large number of tobacco dependent patients’ charts that received little documentation o f smoking cessation education. Eight seven percent of the patients were assessed regarding smoking cessation; however, only 16% were advised to avoid smoke through the course o f their illness. Pender’s Health Promotion Model provides framework for the study

Identifying and prioritizing potential conservation sites in the Upper Oconee subbasin

Proceedings of the 2009 Georgia Water Resources Conference, April 27, 28, and 29, 2009 Athens, Georgia.Landscape scale conservation planning informed by stakeholders is necessary for effective conservation action. We developed a watershed level conservation planning approach by working with two local land trusts that operate in the Upper Oconee subbasin of northeast Georgia. Emphasizing the interdependency of ecological processes and human livelihood to area residents motivates stewardship; hence, we focused on conservation values that draw these linkages. In the United States, private landowner conservation is essential for successful protection of ecological processes and biodiversity. The prevalent route for involving private landowners with conservation is through partnerships with land trusts. A rapid proliferation of land trusts across the U.S. over the past decade indicates the increasing importance of private land conservation efforts. As our primary objective, we developed a GIS model for evaluating nine conservation features in the watershed using a weighted scoring system modified from the Georgia Land Conservation Program evaluation criteria. We extracted the 70 highest-ranking parcels as target recruitment parcels. The land trusts will begin targeting these 70 parcels for easement recruitment immediately. The second objective included quantifying these nine conservation features for current easements and other conservation lands to aid development of strategic conservation plans. Land trust personnel agreed with the relative scoring of their current holdings. We provided the land trusts access to the entire database of values for the features analyzed in all 34,024 parcels, empowering them to visit a potential easement site with a priori knowledge; thereby, enhancing the efficiency of their finite funding and personnel resources.Sponsored by: Georgia Environmental Protection Division U.S. Geological Survey, Georgia Water Science Center U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service Georgia Institute of Technology, Georgia Water Resources Institute The University of Georgia, Water Resources FacultyThis book was published by Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources, The University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia 30602-2152. The views and statements advanced in this publication are solely those of the authors and do not represent official views or policies of The University of Georgia, the U.S. Geological Survey, the Georgia Water Research Institute as authorized by the Water Research Institutes Authorization Act of 1990 (P.L. 101-307) or the other conference sponsors

IDENTIFYING AND PRIORITIZING POTENTIAL CONSERVATION SITES IN THE UPPER OCONEE SUBBASIN

Abstract. Landscape scale conservation planning informed by stakeholders is necessary for effective conservation action. We developed a watershed level conservation planning approach by working with two local land trusts that operate in the Upper Oconee subbasin of northeast Georgia. Emphasizing the interdependency of ecological processes and human livelihood to area residents motivates stewardship; hence, we focused on conservation values that draw these linkages. In the United States, private landowner conservation is essential for successful protection of ecological processes and biodiversity. The prevalent route for involving private landowners with conservation is through partnerships with land trusts. A rapid proliferation of land trusts across the U.S. over the past decade indicates the increasing importance of private land conservation efforts. As our primary objective, we developed a GIS model for evaluating nine conservation features in the watershed using a weighted scoring system modified from the Georgia Land Conservation Program evaluation criteria. We extracted the 70 highest-ranking parcels as target recruitment parcels. The land trusts will begin targeting these 70 parcels for easement recruitment immediately. The second objective included quantifying these nine conservation features for current easements and other conservation lands to aid development of strategic conservation plans. Land trust personnel agreed with the relative scoring of their current holdings. We provided the land trusts access to the entire database of values for the features analyzed in all 34,024 parcels, empowering them to visit a potential easement site with a priori knowledge; thereby, enhancing the efficiency of their finite funding and personnel resources

DARPA Phoenix Payload Orbital Delivery System: Progress towards Small Satellite Access to GEO

The emerging practice of hosting payloads on commercial geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO) satellites is gaining traction throughout the space community because of the flight opportunities and budgetary savings that it offers. Using the hosted payload model, the DARPA Phoenix Payload Orbital Delivery (POD) system is meant to enable a higher tempo to GEO for small‐mass hardware items. The POD system proposes a departure from the typical hosted payload. The POD would provide a controlled release of the hosted payload from the commercial host near GEO. The POD standard user\u27s guide developed under the Phoenix program ensures compatibility with most of the approximately 15 commercial launches to GEO each year. By hosting with a standard user’s guide, commercial satellite providers would be capable of bringing hosted payloads quite late into the typical launch integration cycle. The combination of hightempo commercial launches and late integration would create an “express delivery” capability to GEO orbit. This POD capability would continue the paradigm shift of working with the commercial satellite provider directly to leverage the efficiencies of mass to orbit, reducing interactions with the launch provider. Phoenix is completing the design and ground testing of the POD system to help make access to new orbits more affordable and more routine for small‐mass systems

Bispectrum of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Effect

We perform a detailed study of the bispectrum of the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect. Using an analytical model for the pressure profiles of the intracluster medium, we demonstrate the SZ bispectrum to be a sensitive probe of the amplitude of the matter power spectrum parameter sigma_8. We find that the bispectrum amplitude scales as B_SZ ~ sigma_8^{11-12}, compared to that of the power spectrum, which scales as A_tSZ ~ sigma_8^{7-9}. We show that the SZ bispectrum is principally sourced by massive clusters at redshifts around z~0.4, which have been well-studied observationally. This is in contrast to the SZ power spectrum, which receives a significant contribution from less-well understood low-mass and high-redshift groups and clusters. Therefore, the amplitude of the bispectrum at l~3000 is less sensitive to astrophysical uncertainties than the SZ power spectrum. We show that current high resolution CMB experiments should be able to detect the SZ bispectrum amplitude with high significance, in part due to the low contamination from extra-galactic foregrounds. A combination of the SZ bispectrum and the power spectrum can sharpen the measurements of thermal and kinetic SZ components and help distinguish cosmological and astrophysical information from high-resolution CMB maps.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, published in The Astrophysical Journa

Identification of genomic regions determining the phenological development leading to floral transition in wheat (Triticum aestivum L.)

Autumn-seeded winter cereals acquire tolerance to freezing temperatures and become vernalized by exposure to low temperature (LT). The level of accumulated LT tolerance depends on the cold acclimation rate and factors controlling timing of floral transition at the shoot apical meristem. In this study, genomic loci controlling the floral transition time were mapped in a winter wheat (T. aestivum L.) doubled haploid (DH) mapping population segregating for LT tolerance and rate of phenological development. The final leaf number (FLN), days to FLN, and days to anthesis were determined for 142 DH lines grown with and without vernalization in controlled environments. Analysis of trait data by composite interval mapping (CIM) identified 11 genomic regions that carried quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for the developmental traits studied. CIM analysis showed that the time for floral transition in both vernalized and non-vernalized plants was controlled by common QTL regions on chromosomes 1B, 2A, 2B, 6A and 7A. A QTL identified on chromosome 4A influenced floral transition time only in vernalized plants. Alleles of the LT-tolerant parent, Norstar, delayed floral transition at all QTLs except at the 2A locus. Some of the QTL alleles delaying floral transition also increased the length of vegetative growth and delayed flowering time. The genes underlying the QTLs identified in this study encode factors involved in regional adaptation of cold hardy winter wheat

Significant Surface-Water Connectivity of Geographically Isolated Wetlands

We evaluated the current literature, coupled with our collective research expertise, on surface-water connectivity of wetlands considered to be geographically isolated (sensu Tiner Wetlands 23:494–516, 2003a) to critically assess the scientific foundation of grouping wetlands based on the singular condition of being surrounded by uplands. The most recent research on wetlands considered to be geographically isolated shows the difficulties in grouping an ecological resource that does not reliably indicate lack of surface water connectivity in order to meet legal, regulatory, or scientific needs. Additionally, the practice of identifying geographically isolated wetlands based on distance from a stream can result in gross overestimates of the number of wetlands lacking ecologically important surface-water connections. Our findings do not support use of the overly simplistic label of geographically isolated wetlands . Wetlands surrounded by uplands vary in function and surface water connections based on wetland landscape setting, context, climate, and geographic region and should be evaluated as such. We found that the geographically isolated grouping does not reflect our understanding of the hydrologic variability of these wetlands and hence does not benefit conservation of the Nation’s diverse wetland resources. Therefore, we strongly discourage use of categorizations that provide overly simplistic views of surface water connectivity of wetlands fully embedded in upland landscapes

Impact of Cluster Physics on the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich Power Spectrum

We use an analytic model to investigate the theoretical uncertainty on the thermal Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (SZ) power spectrum due to astrophysical uncertainties in the thermal structure of the intracluster medium. Our model accounts for star formation and energy feedback (from supernovae and active galactic nuclei) as well as radially dependent non-thermal pressure support due to random gas motions, the latter calibrated by recent hydrodynamical simulations. We compare the model against X-ray observations of low redshift clusters, finding excellent agreement with observed pressure profiles. Varying the levels of feedback and non-thermal pressure support can significantly change both the amplitude and shape of the thermal SZ power spectrum. Increasing the feedback suppresses power at small angular scales, shifting the peak of the power spectrum to lower ell. On the other hand, increasing the non-thermal pressure support has the opposite effect, significantly reducing power at large angular scales. In general, including non-thermal pressure at the level measured in simulations has a large effect on the power spectrum, reducing the amplitude by 50% at angular scales of a few arcminutes compared to a model without a non-thermal component. Our results demonstrate that measurements of the shape of the power spectrum can reveal useful information on important physical processes in groups and clusters, especially at high-redshift where there exists little observational data. Comparing with the recent South Pole Telescope measurements of the small-scale cosmic microwave background power spectrum, we find our model reduces the tension between the values of sigma_8 measured from the SZ power spectrum and from cluster abundances.Comment: 15 Pages, 9 Figures, updated to match version accepted by Ap

Geographically Isolated Wetlands: Rethinking a Misnomer

Abstract We explore the category Bgeographically isolated wetlands^(GIWs; i.e., wetlands completely surrounded by uplands at the local scale) as used in the wetland sciences. As currently used, the GIW category (1) hampers scientific efforts by obscuring important hydrological and ecological differences among multiple wetland functional types, (2) aggregates wetlands in a manner not reflective of regulatory and management information needs, (3) implies wetlands so described are in some way Bisolated,^an often incorrect implication, (4) is inconsistent with more broadly used and accepted concepts of Bgeographic isolation,^and (5) has injected unnecessary confusion into scientific investigations and discussions. Instead, we suggest other wetland classification systems offer more informative alternatives. For example, hydrogeomorphic (HGM) classes based on wellestablished scientific definitions account for wetland functional diversity thereby facilitating explorations into questions of connectivity without an a priori designation of Bisolation.^Additionally, an HGM-type approach could be used in combination with terms reflective of current regulatory or policymaking needs. For those rare cases in which the condition of being surrounded by uplands is the relevant distinguishing characteristic, use of terminology that does not unnecessarily imply isolation (e.g., Bupland embedded wetlands^) would help alleviate much confusion caused by the Bgeographically isolated wetlands^misnomer