Just the Facts for 2003

Almost 19,000 employees work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, State departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2003” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Personnel wants to present data in its purist form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading . It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government.

Just the Facts for 2005

Almost 19,000 employees work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, State departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2005” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Personnel wants to present data in its purist form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading . It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government.

Just the Facts for 2006

Almost 19,000 employees work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, State departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2006” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Personnel wants to present data in its purist form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading . It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government.

Drift compensation of gas sensor array data by Orthogonal Signal Correction

Drift is an important issue that impairs the reliability of gas sensing systems. Sensor aging, memory effects and environmental disturbances produce shifts in sensor responses that make initial statistical models for gas or odor recognition useless after a relatively short period (typically few weeks). Frequent recalibrations are needed to preserve system accuracy. However, when recalibrations involve numerous samples they become expensive and laborious. An interesting and lower cost alternative is drift counteraction by signal processing techniques. Orthogonal Signal Correction (OSC) is proposed for drift compensation in chemical sensor arrays. The performance of OSC is also compared with Component Correction (CC). A simple classification algorithm has been employed for assessing the performance of the algorithms on a dataset composed by measurements of three analytes using an array of seventeen conductive polymer gas sensors over a ten month period.

Drift compensation of gas sensor array data by common principal component analysis

A new drift compensation method based on Common Principal Component Analysis (CPCA) is proposed. The drift variance in data is found as the principal components computed by CPCA. This method finds components that are common for all gasses in feature space. The method is compared in classification task with respect to the other approaches published where the drift direction is estimated through a Principal Component Analysis (PCA) of a reference gas. The proposed new method ¿ employing no specific reference gas, but information from all gases ¿has shown the same performance as the traditional approach with the best-fitted reference gas. Results are shown with data lasting 7-months including three gases at different concentrations for an array of 17 polymeric sensors.

"Just stories"

Lectio praecursoria at the public examination of his doctoral thesis Fictions to live in: narration as an argument for fiction in Salman Rushdies's novels, Department of English, University of Tampere, on October the ninth, 1998

Just the Facts for 2011

There are 20,552 full-time employees who work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, state departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2008” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Administrative Services, Human Resource Enterprise (DAS/HRE) wants to present data in its purest form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading. It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government. The following chapter summaries are intended to do that.

Just the Facts for 2009

There are 20,552 full-time employees who work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, state departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2008” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Administrative Services, Human Resource Enterprise (DAS/HRE) wants to present data in its purest form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading. It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government. The following chapter summaries are intended to do that.

Just the Facts for 2010

There are 20,552 full-time employees who work for the State of Iowa Executive Branch (excluding Fair Authority, Community-Based Corrections, and the Regents employees). These employees are undoubtedly the most valuable resource for providing timely and quality services to Iowans. To strategically manage this resource, state departments and policymakers must have thorough and accurate information. The information in “Just the Facts for 2008” is a snapshot of the workforce, collected, compiled, and presented in a format that will aid agencies and decision makers in strategic planning. In many cases, data cover a number of years and are presented to give the reader a sense of trends. While the Department of Administrative Services, Human Resource Enterprise (DAS/HRE) wants to present data in its purest form so readers can draw their own conclusions, we also have a responsibility to clarify anything that may be confusing or misleading. It is important to highlight workforce trends and explain their significance to the work of Iowa state government. The following chapter summaries are intended to do that.

Mechanisms and evolutionary patterns of mammalian and avian dosage compensation.

As a result of sex chromosome differentiation from ancestral autosomes, male mammalian cells only contain one X chromosome. It has long been hypothesized that X-linked gene expression levels have become doubled in males to restore the original transcriptional output, and that the resulting X overexpression in females then drove the evolution of X inactivation (XCI). However, this model has never been directly tested and patterns and mechanisms of dosage compensation across different mammals and birds generally remain little understood. Here we trace the evolution of dosage compensation using extensive transcriptome data from males and females representing all major mammalian lineages and birds. Our analyses suggest that the X has become globally upregulated in marsupials, whereas we do not detect a global upregulation of this chromosome in placental mammals. However, we find that a subset of autosomal genes interacting with X-linked genes have become downregulated in placentals upon the emergence of sex chromosomes. Thus, different driving forces may underlie the evolution of XCI and the highly efficient equilibration of X expression levels between the sexes observed for both of these lineages. In the egg-laying monotremes and birds, which have partially homologous sex chromosome systems, partial upregulation of the X (Z in birds) evolved but is largely restricted to the heterogametic sex, which provides an explanation for the partially sex-biased X (Z) expression and lack of global inactivation mechanisms in these lineages. Our findings suggest that dosage reductions imposed by sex chromosome differentiation events in amniotes were resolved in strikingly different ways.

Rice straw incorporated just before soil flooding increases acetic acid formation and decreases available nitrogen

Incorporation of rice straw into the soil just before flooding for water-seeded rice can immobilize mineral nitrogen (N) and lead to the production of acetic acid harmful to the rice seedlings, which negatively affects grain yield. This study aimed to evaluate the formation of organic acids and variation in pH and to quantify the mineral N concentration in the soil as a function of different times of incorporation of rice straw or of ashes from burning the straw before flooding. The experiment was carried out in a greenhouse using an Inceptisol (Typic Haplaquept) soil. The treatments were as follows: control (no straw or ash); incorporation of ashes from previous straw burning; rice straw incorporated to drained soil 60 days before flooding; straw incorporated 30 days before flooding; straw incorporated 15 days before flooding and straw incorporated on the day of flooding. Experimental units were plastic buckets with 6.0 kg of soil. The buckets remained flooded throughout the trial period without rice plants. Soil samples were collected every seven days, beginning one day before flooding until the 13th week of flooding for determination of mineral N- ammonium (NH4+) and nitrate (NO3-). Soil solution pH and concentration of organic acids (acetic, propionic and butyric) were determined. All NO3- there was before flooding was lost in approximately two weeks of flooding, in all treatments. There was sigmoidal behavior for NH4+ formation in all treatments, i.e., ammonium ion concentration began to rise shortly after soil flooding, slightly decreased and then went up again. On the 91st day of flooding, the NH4+ concentrations in soil was 56 mg kg-1 in the control treatment, 72 mg kg-1 for the 60-day treatment, 73 mg kg-1 for the 30-day treatment and 53 mg kg-1 for the ash incorporation treatment. These ammonium concentrations correspond to 84, 108, 110 and 80 kg ha-1 of N-NH4+, respectively. When the straw was incorporated on the day of flooding or 15 days before, the concentration of N-NH4+ in the soil was 28 and 54 mg kg-1, equivalent to an accumulation of 42 and 81 kg ha-1 of N-NH4+, respectively. There was formation of acetic acid in which toxic concentrations were reached (7.2 mmol L-1) on the 15th day of flooding only for the treatment with straw incorporated on the day of flooding. The pH of the soil solution of all the treatments increased after flooding and this increase was faster in the treatments with incorporation of straw, followed by the ash treatment and then the control. After 60 days of flooding, however, the pH values were around 6.5 for all treatments, except for the control, which reached a pH of 6.3. Rice straw should be incorporated into the soil at least 30 days before flooding; otherwise, it may immobilize part of the mineral N and produce acetic acid in concentrations toxic to rice seedlings.