Promoting Healthy Communities and Preventing Childhood Obesity: Trends in Recent Legislation

Summarizes state legislation enacted in 2009 in the areas of healthy eating and physical activity, such as school nutrition and BMI measurements, and healthy community design and access to healthy food, such as safe routes to school and farmers' markets

Promoting Healthy Communities and Reducing Childhood Obesity: Legislative Options

Summarizes legislation proposed or enacted in 2007-08 in the areas of healthy eating and physical activity such as nutrition, physical education, and obesity prevention and treatment, as well as healthy community design and access to healthy food

Naturally Occurring Asbestos in Alaska and Experiences and Policy of Other States Regarding its Use

INE/AUTC 09.0

Application of general semi-infinite Programming to Lapidary Cutting Problems

We consider a volume maximization problem arising in gemstone cutting industry. The problem is formulated as a general semi-infinite program (GSIP) and solved using an interiorpoint method developed by Stein. It is shown, that the convexity assumption needed for the convergence of the algorithm can be satisfied by appropriate modelling. Clustering techniques are used to reduce the number of container constraints, which is necessary to make the subproblems practically tractable. An iterative process consisting of GSIP optimization and adaptive refinement steps is then employed to obtain an optimal solution which is also feasible for the original problem. Some numerical results based on realworld data are also presented

Biomarker and carbon isotope constraints (d13C, d14C) on sources and cycling of particulate organic matter discharged by large Siberian rivers draining permafrost areas

Circumpolar permafrost soils store about half of the global soil organic carbon pool. Currently most of this organic matter remains frozen and therefore does not take part in the active carbon cycle, making permafrost soils a globally important carbon sink. As a result of Arctic climate warming the thaw-induced release of greenhouse gases to the atmosphere possibly creates a positive climate feedback. The great arctic rivers play an important role in global biogeochemical cycles by connecting the large permafrost carbon pool of their hinterlands with the arctic shelf seas and the Arctic Ocean. The first part of this thesis deals with the modern Lena River system using biomarkers to detect and characterize organic matter sources. The second part investigates past permafrost dynamics and the possible permafrost/wetland climate feedback during the last deglaciation and Early Holocene using compound-specific 14C dating of sediments discharged by the Amur River to the Okhotsk Sea

Comparison of Heating Efficiency of a Heat Pump to Electric Heating Panels

Several questions may be raised about the practicability of the heating feature of a heat pump. Is the heat pump as economical to operate as the ordinary air conditioner and a separate heating system? What months during the year could the heat pump be operated to the best advantage? Could the heat pump supply all the heat requirements for South Dakota conditions? Because there were so many unknown factors involved it was impossible to estimate the operating cost by calculation. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to compare the operating efficiency of a commercially available heat pump air conditioner ( window model) with that of an electric heating panel under actual operating conditions in a single room

Coastal permafrost landscape development since the Late Pleistocene in the western Laptev Sea, Siberia

The palaeoenvironmental development of the western Laptev Sea is understood primarily from investigations of exposed cliffs and surface sediment cores from the shelf. In 2005, a core transect was drilled between the Taymyr Peninsula and the Lena Delta, an area that was part of the westernmost region of the non-glaciated Beringian landmass during the late Quaternary. The transect of five cores, one terrestrial and four marine, taken near Cape Mamontov Klyk reached 12km offshore and 77m below sea level. A multiproxy approach combined cryolithological, sedimentological, geochronological (C-14-AMS, OSL on quartz, IR-OSL on feldspars) and palaeoecological (pollen, diatoms) methods. Our interpretation of the proxies focuses on landscape history and the transition of terrestrial into subsea permafrost. Marine interglacial deposits overlain by relict terrestrial permafrost within the same offshore core were encountered in the western Laptev Sea. Moreover, the marine interglacial deposits lay unexpectedly deep at 64m below modern sea level 12km from the current coastline, while no marine deposits were encountered onshore. This implies that the position of the Eemian coastline presumably was similar to today's. The landscape reconstruction suggests Eemian coastal lagoons and thermokarst lakes, followed by Early to Middle Weichselian fluvially dominated terrestrial deposition. During the Late Weichselian, this fluvial landscape was transformed into a poorly drained accumulation plain, characterized by widespread and broad ice-wedge polygons. Finally, the shelf plain was flooded by the sea during the Holocene, resulting in the inundation and degradation of terrestrial permafrost and its transformation into subsea permafrost