Bison Conservation in the Northern Great Plains

Temperate grasslands are the least protected ecosystem in the world. In North America, only \u3c 4% of tallgrass prairie, 64% of mixed-grass prairie, and 66% of shortgrass prairie are intact. Historically, grazing played an important role in maintaining prairie landscapes through nutrient cycling and the diversification of vegetation structure and composition. Within grasslands, the plains bison (Bos bison) was the most numerous and influential grazer. However, by 1900 bison were reduced to ¡Ü 1,000 animals throughout North America. Today, bison are scattered throughout their historical range, numbering \u3e 500,000 individuals. Recent questions have surfaced regarding the success of this effort, however, because \u3c 21,000 plains bison are managed as conservation herds (n = 62) and 8% of those herds are managed on areas of \u3e 2,000 km2. In addition, \u3e100,000,000 cattle now graze rangelands in the U.S. and Canada leading to questions regarding the ecological significance of replacing bison with livestock. Our objectives were to increase knowledge regarding the ecological similarities between bison and cattle, and to determine how both species can be managed to mimic ecological patterns that approximate historical bison populations. We used behavioral observations, movement analyses, and Resource Selection Function (RSF) analyses too quantify similarities and differences between the bison and cattle in the Northern Great Plains. We observed a higher proportion of time spent grazing by cattle (45-49%) than bison (26-28%) and a greater amount of time spent at water. We used First-Passage-Time (FPT) analyses to compare the spatial scale of bison and cattle within pastures. We report selection of spatial scales by bison of 1.8 ¨C 9.0 x greater than currently provided. Lastly, RSF analysis identified important resources including selection of water resources by bison. These results have implications when bison are used to meet grazing restoration objectives because water resources may alter grazing regimes important for prairie obligate species (i.e. grassland birds). For livestock, the time spent at water and grazing encourages grazing practices that increase grazing rotation and movement across the landscape. These may include changes in timing and intensity of grazing, and adjustable mineral and water resources

Aspects of private sector development in Vietnam

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THE METAPHYSICAL FOUNDATIONS OF BUDDHISM AND MODERN SCIENCE: NAGARJUNA AND ALFRED NORTH WHITEHEAD

What are the metaphysical foundations of Buddhism and modern science? Nagarjuna is not looking for a material or immaterial object which can be declared as a fundamental reality of this world. His fundamental reality is not an object. It is a relation between objects. This is a relational view of reality. This is the heart of Nagarjuna’s ideas. In the 19th century a more or less unknown Italian philosopher, Vincenzo Goberti, spoke about relations as the mean and as bonds between things. Later, in quantum physics and in the philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead we are talking about interactions and entanglements. These ideas of relatedness or connections or entanglements in Eastern and Western modes of thought are the main idea of this essay. Not all entanglements are known. Just two examples: the nature of quantum entanglements is not known. Quantum entanglements should be faster than light. That's why Albert Einstein had some doubts. A second example: the completely unknown connections between the mind and the brain. Other examples are mysterious like the connections between birds in a flock. Some are a little known like gravitational forces

Cerebral Venous Engorgement in Hydrops Fetalis

A 34-year-old gravida was diagnosed with hydrops fetalis, hydrothorax with cardiac compression, hygroma, ascites, and subcutaneous edema at 20 weeks of gestation..

Optimizing scenarios of a deep geothermal aquifer storage in the southern Upper Rhine Graben

Based on a newly developed geological 3D reservoir model for the demonstration site of the ‘Freiburger Bucht’ in the Upper Rhine Graben (SW Germany), geothermal development and realization concepts of an aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) in the Buntsandstein aquifer were elaborated and energetically evaluated by numerical modeling. The thermal–hydraulic coupled modeling was performed with the FE-software OpenGeoSys and COMSOL. For this purpose, the geological model was converted into a numerical model and calibrated by local and regional, hydrogeological and geothermal measured values. A detailed study based on two-phase storage-heating cycles per year with constant injection temperature on the ‘hot side’ of the ATES, different volumetric flow rates, and temperature spreads was performed to quantify possible storage capacities, energies, and efficiencies. The calculated efficiency of the cyclic storage operation in this study, averaged over 10 storage heating cycles, are between 50 and 85%, depending on flow rate and temperature spread. The efficiency of the individual storage heating cycles increases from year to year in all scenarios considered, as the ‘hot side’ of the storage heats up in the long term. To increase ATES’ efficiency, also horizontal wells were integrated into the numerical model and the results were compared with those of inclined wells

Stochastic performance assessment on long-term behavior of multilateral closed deep geothermal systems

Increasing the contribution of geothermal systems to green energy generation requires designing new innovative systems producing a significant amount of thermal power in a sustainable manner. The focus of this study is the performance evaluation of multilateral closed deep geothermal (MCDG) systems as a novel environmentally friendly approach for energy extraction from earth. The investigations on these synthetic systems assume a probabilistic number of borehole sections with several vertical and horizontal wellbores connected through some manifolds and doglegs. To reduce possible thermal losses, the circulated fluid is extracted through only one production wellbore. The findings of this study demonstrated that the heat absorption per meter of MCDG systems is much higher than for simple closed geothermal systems (CDG). Operating with these systems will not necessarily yield better performance. It is also found that the long-term performance of MCDG systems can be predicted as a function of their short-term behavior through stochastic analysis. This correlation is interestingly independent of the number of wellbores and flow rate. By defining specific criteria, the high-performance MCDG systems can be filtered to demonstrate common features as a specific relation between flow rates per vertical and horizontal wellbores. This characterization of MCDG systems should support the design of future high-performance systems

MulT_predict - An optimised comprehensive multicomponent geothermometer

In this study, we introduce MulT_predict as a fully integrated solute multicomponent geothermometer, combining numerical optimisation processes for sensitive parameters to back-calculate to chemical reservoir conditions. This results in a state of the art geothermometer, providing an accurate reservoir temperature estimation validated by geothermal borehole measurements on a worldwide scale. In addition, a universally valid mineral assemblage for an unknown reservoir composition is developed, focusing on worldwide applicability. Using the evolved methodology, the limits of the optimisation processes are determined by using a synthetic brine (150 ◦C, pH 6, aluminium concentration 0.003 mmol/l) and successively perturbing its geochemical equilibrium state. Individual back-calculation of reservoir conditions lead to valid temperature estimations of 145 ◦C, 3.4% lower than the initial temperature while a simultaneous and interdependent optimisation reconstructs the sensitive parameters even more precisely with a deviation of 0.056 for the initial pH value, and 0.164 μmol/l for the aluminium concentration