Left to right: Jay Sah and Nilesh Timilsina measuring diameter at breast height in mangrove forests damaged by Hurricane Wilma, Harney River

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.

Jay Sah measuring tree height in a mangrove forest impacted by Hurricane Wilma, Harney River

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.

Left to right: Mike Ross and Nilesh Timilsina measuring mangrove tree height after Hurricane Wilma, Harney River

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.

Nilesh Timilsina measuring tree height in a mangrove forest impacted by Hurricane Wilma, Harney River

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation through the Florida Coastal Everglades Long-Term Ecological Research program under Cooperative Agreements #DBI-0620409 and #DEB-9910514. This image is made available for non-commercial or educational use only.

The geochemistry, mineralogy, and petrology of basalts at DSDP Leg 59 Holes

Legs 59 and 60 of the International Phase of Oceanic Drilling (IPOD) were designed to study the nature and history of volcanism of the active Mariana arc, its currently spreading inter-arc basin (the Mariana Trough), and the series of inactive basins and intervening ridges that lie to the west. The older basins and ridges were drilled during Leg 59 as the first part of a transect of single-bit holes drilled in each major basin and ridge. The eastern part of the transect - the technically active region - was drilled during Leg 60. The evolution of island-arc volcanos and magma genesis associated with lithospheric subduction remain some of the most complex petrologic problems confronting us. Many types of source material (mantle, oceanic crust, continental crust) and an unusually wide range of possible physical conditions at the time of magma genesis must be identified even before the roles of partial melting and subsequent magma fractionation, mixing, and contamination can be assessed.

A new genus Abyssogena from deep-water vents and seeps

A new genus Abyssogena is established for A. phaseoliformis (Métivier, Okutani & Ohta, 1986) and A. kaikoi (Okutani & Métivier, 1986), which were previously assigned to the genus Calyptogena Dall, 1891, and also for two new species, A. southwardae and A. novacula. The most characteristic features of Abyssogena are an elongate shell up to about 280 mm in length; a pallial line starting from the ventral margin of the anterior adductor scar; secondary pallial attachment scars developed dorsal to the pallial line; radially arranged hinge teeth with a reduced anterior cardinal tooth in the right valve; and presence of an inner ctenidial demibranch only. Abyssogena occurs in deep water from 2,985 to 6,400 m and is distributed in the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans at cold seeps along continental margins and hydrothermal vents at mid-oceanic ridges. Some species have a remarkably wide geographic distribution; A. southwardae is present throughout the Atlantic and A. phaseoliformis is present in Japan, Kuril-Kamchatka, as well as Aleutian Trenches. No fossils of Abyssogena are known.

Expertise Development in Volleyball: the Role of Early Sport Activities and Players’ Age and Height

The purpose of this study was to analyse the developmental pathway of skilled and less skilled volleyball players by focusing on the quantity and type of sporting activities, as well as their age and height in comparison to peers in those experiences. Retrospective interviews were conducted to provide a longitudinal and detailed account of sport involvement of 30 skilled and 30 less skilled volleyball players (15 male and 15 female players per group) throughout different developmental stages (stage 1: 8-12 years; stage 2: 13-16 years; stage 3: 17-20 years). Results indicated that the developmental pathway of these volleyball players (i.e. skilled and less skilled) was characterized by an early diversified sport involvement with a greater participation in sport activities during stages 1 and 2. However, skilled players specialized later in volleyball (between age 14 and 15) and performed more hours of volleyball at stage 3 (from 17 years of age onwards). Also, skilled players (male and female) were younger in both the diversified sport activities and volleyball at the later stages of development (i.e. stages 2 and 3), and skilled female players were taller than peers in those activities in the early stages of development (i.e. stages 1 and 2). The present findings suggest early diversification as a feasible pathway to reach expertise in volleyball and highlight the importance of practicing with older peers once specialization in the main sport has occurred. The findings highlight the need for coaches and sport programs to consider different stimuli existing within the training environment (i.e. characteristics of athletes, such as age and height) that influence the quality of practice and contribute to players’ expertise development.

Energizing the Oak Ridges Moraine? Analyzing the Policy Implications of Three Wind Energy Developments on the Oak Ridges Moraine and their Potential Impact on the Coordinated Land Use Planning Review through the Involvement of First Nations and Environmental Non-governmental Organizations

This research explores the policy implications of the approval of three wind energy projects on the Oak Ridges Moraine, and their impact on the Coordinated Land Use Planning Review process. Specifically, it focuses on the involvement of First Nations and environmental non-governmental organizations (ENGOs). This research was conducted through analyzing submissions to the Coordinated Land Use Planning Review, related legislation and policy, Environmental Review Tribunal hearing documents, and interviews with key informants. This research culminates in a number of recommendations to the Coordinated Review informed by the analysis.

An investigation of lower limb joint powers as a predictive measure of countermovement vertical jump height.

Measuring and tracking athletic performance is crucial to an athlete’s development and the countermovement vertical jump is often used to measure athletic performance, particularly lower limb power. The linear power developed in the lower limb is estimated through jump height. However, the relationship between angular power, produced by the joints of the lower limb, and jump height is not well understood. This study examined the contributions of the kinetic value of angular power, and its kinematic component, angular velocity, of the lower limb joints to jump height in the countermovement vertical jump. Kinematic and kinetic data were gathered from twenty varsity-level basketball and volleyball athletes as they performed six maximal effort jumps in four arm swing conditions: no-arm involvement, single-non-dominant arm swing, single-dominant arm swing, and two-arm swing. The displacement of the whole body centre of mass, peak joint powers, peak angular velocity, and locations of the peaks as a percentage of the jump’s takeoff period, were computed. Linear regressions assessed the relationship of the variables to jump height. Results demonstrated that knee peak power (p = 0.001, ß = 0.363, r = 0.363), its location within takeoff period (p = 0.023, ß = -0.256, r = 0.256), and peak knee peak angular velocity (p = 0.005, ß = 0.310, r = 0.310) were moderately linked to increased jump height. Additionally, the location, within the takeoff period, of the peak angular velocities of the hip (p = 0.003, ß = -0.318, r = 0.419) and ankle (p = 0.011, ß = 0.270, r = 0.419) were positively linked to jump height. These results highlight the importance of training the velocity and timing of joint motion beyond traditional power training protocols as well as the importance of further investigation into appropriate testing protocol that is sensitive to the contributions by individual joints in maximal effort jumping.

Modeling of Turbulent Natural Gas and Biogas Flames of the Delft Jet-in-Hot-Coflow Burner: Effects of Coflow Temperature, Fuel Temperature and Fuel Composition on the Flame Lift-Off Height

The structure of a turbulent non-premixed flame of a biogas fuel in a hot and diluted coflow mimicking moderate and intense low dilution (MILD) combustion is studied numerically. Biogas fuel is obtained by dilution of Dutch natural gas (DNG) with CO2. The results of biogas combustion are compared with those of DNG combustion in the Delft Jet-in-Hot-Coflow (DJHC) burner. New experimental measurements of lift-off height and of velocity and temperature statistics have been made to provide a database for evaluating the capability of numerical methods in predicting the flame structure. Compared to the lift-off height of the DNG flame, addition of 30 % carbon dioxide to the fuel increases the lift-off height by less than 15 %. Numerical simulations are conducted by solving the RANS equations using Reynolds stress model (RSM) as turbulence model in combination with EDC (Eddy Dissipation Concept) and transported probability density function (PDF) as turbulence-chemistry interaction models. The DRM19 reduced mechanism is used as chemical kinetics with the EDC model. A tabulated chemistry model based on the Flamelet Generated Manifold (FGM) is adopted in the PDF method. The table describes a non-adiabatic three stream mixing problem between fuel, coflow and ambient air based on igniting counterflow diffusion flamelets. The results show that the EDC/DRM19 and PDF/FGM models predict the experimentally observed decreasing trend of lift-off height with increase of the coflow temperature. Although more detailed chemistry is used with EDC, the temperature fluctuations at the coflow inlet (approximately 100K) cannot be included resulting in a significant overprediction of the flame temperature. Only the PDF modeling results with temperature fluctuations predict the correct mean temperature profiles of the biogas case and compare well with the experimental temperature distributions.

Photoionization of Co+ and electron-impact excitation of Co2 + using the Dirac R-matrix method

Modelling of massive stars and supernovae (SNe) plays a crucial role in understanding galaxies. From this modelling we can derive fundamental constraints on stellar evolution, mass-loss processes, mixing, and the products of nucleosynthesis. Proper account must be taken of all important processes that populate and depopulate the levels (collisional excitation, de-excitation, ionization, recombination, photoionization, bound–bound processes). For the analysis of Type Ia SNe and core collapse SNe (Types Ib, Ic and II) Fe group elements are particularly important. Unfortunately little data is currently available and most noticeably absent are the photoionization cross-sections for the Fe-peaks which have high abundances in SNe. Important interactions for both photoionization and electron-impact excitation are calculated using the relativistic Dirac atomic R-matrix codes (DARC) for low-ionization stages of Cobalt. All results are calculated up to photon energies of 45 eV and electron energies up to 20 eV. The wavefunction representation of Co III has been generated using GRASP0 by including the dominant 3d⁷, 3d⁶[4s, 4p], 3p⁴3d⁹ and 3p⁶3d⁹ configurations, resulting in 292 fine structure levels. Electron-impact collision strengths and Maxwellian averaged effective collision strengths across a wide range of astrophysically relevant temperatures are computed for Co III. In addition, statistically weighted level-resolved ground and metastable photoionization cross-sections are presented for Co II and compared directly with existing work.

A century of trends in adult human height

NCD Risk Factor Collaboration (NCD-RisC)

DYNAMICS OF THE SHORT TERM AND LONG TERM AVIAN DISTRIBUTIONS IN NORTH AMERICA - THE ROLES OF VEGETATION HEIGHT HETEROGENEITY AND CLIMATIC FACTORS

Understanding how biodiversity spatially distribute over both the short term and long term, and what factors are affecting the distribution, are critical for modeling the spatial pattern of biodiversity as well as for promoting effective conservation planning and practices. This dissertation aims to examine factors that influence short-term and long-term avian distribution from the geographical sciences perspective. The research develops landscape level habitat metrics to characterize forest height heterogeneity and examines their efficacies in modelling avian richness at the continental scale. Two types of novel vegetation-height-structured habitat metrics are created based on second order texture algorithms and the concepts of patch-based habitat metrics. I correlate the height-structured metrics with the richness of different forest guilds, and also examine their efficacies in multivariate richness models. The results suggest that height heterogeneity, beyond canopy height alone, supplements habitat characterization and richness models of two forest bird guilds. The metrics and models derived in this study demonstrate practical examples of utilizing three-dimensional vegetation data for improved characterization of spatial patterns in species richness. The second and the third projects focus on analyzing centroids of avian distributions, and testing hypotheses regarding the direction and speed of these shifts. I first showcase the usefulness of centroids analysis for characterizing the distribution changes of a few case study species. Applying the centroid method on 57 permanent resident bird species, I show that multi-directional distribution shifts occurred in large number of studied species. I also demonstrate, plain birds are not shifting their distribution faster than mountain birds, contrary to the prediction based on climate change velocity hypothesis. By modelling the abundance change rate at regional level, I show that extreme climate events and precipitation measures associate closely with some of the long-term distribution shifts. This dissertation improves our understanding on bird habitat characterization for species richness modelling, and expands our knowledge on how avian populations shifted their ranges in North America responding to changing environments in the past four decades. The results provide an important scientific foundation for more accurate predictive species distribution modeling in future.