Potential use of remote sensing to assess effects of wave action on plant re-establishment

Evaluation of the potential for remote sensing to detect a relationship between wave action factors and plant re-establishment after a habitat enhancement at Lake Kissimmee, Florida. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and remote sensing, wave action factors were found to be inversely related to the probability of plant re-establishment. However, correlation of wave action factors with areal coverage of aquatic plants based on field measurements, were unable to detect a significant relationship. Other factors aside from wave action, including littoral slope and the presence of offshore vegetation, may have influenced plant re-establishment in these sites. Remote sensing techniques may be useful to detect large changes in plants communities, however small changes in plant coverages may not be detectable using this technique.

The induced flow field by internal solitary wave and its action on cylindrical piles in the stratified ocean

The induced flow fields by internal solitary waves and its actions on cylindrical piles in density stratified ocean with a basic density profile and a basic velocity profile are investigated. Some results, such as the time evolution of flow fields and hydrodynamic forces on the piles are yielded both by theoretical analysis and numerical calculation for general and specific cases. Several kinds of ambient sea conditions of the South China Sea are specified for numerical simulation. Moreover, the effects of relative density difference, depth ratio and wave steepness on maximal total force and total torque are analyzed.

Action for Children – Introducing collaborative learning using Google Apps for Education

Paul Kendrick, Vocational Trainer for Action Training, has created a bespoke virtual learning environment (VLE) utilising Google Apps for Education. Learners and trainers are now more fulfilled as they have greater ownership of their learning environment and can pick which applications best suit their learning needs. They can also work more collaboratively as they are able to share documents with other learners and trainers between different locations.

Laser action from 1,3,5,7-tetramethyl-2,6-diethyl-8-n-propyl pyrromethene-BF2

We measured spectroscopic and laser action properties of a novel 8-position substituted pyrromethene-BF2, namely 1,3,5,7-tetramethyl-2,6-diethyl-8-n-propyl pyrromethene-BF2 complex. The laser action was performed with the corresponding dye solution in ethanol, which was placed in a Littman-type laser cavity pumped by the second harmonic of a Q-switched Nd:YAG laser. The spectroscopic measurements clearly indicated that the corresponding dye solution in ethanol exhibited intense absorption in the visible spectral region with large fluorescence quantum yield. It possesses rather low triplet-triplet absorption in the spectral region 460-550 nm and almost negligible triplet-triplet absorption in the lasing spectral region. As a consequence, it lases nearly as efficiently as commercially available benchmark laser dyes such as Rhodamine-6G and outperformed them in wavelength tunability in our laser cavity and pump geometry. (C) 2002 Optical Society of America.

Stormsmart coasts in action: Two case studies of local level climate change adaptation

Coastal communities throughout the United States have dealt with the devastating effects of storms for centuries, however today’s threats are greater due to three factors. First, the population along the coastline has grown, and is projected to increase.i Additionally, past land use management decisions in the coastal zone have rarely led to the greatest protection from threats. Finally, climate change is predicted to affect coastal areas by accelerating current sea level rise rates and possibly increasing storm intensity.ii These factors compounded together mean that coastal communities are facing a very dangerous situation that threatens economies and human life. (PDF contains 4 pages)

Molecular mechanisms of interleukin-2 gene inducibility: developmental control and combinatorial action of transcription factors

Interleukin-2 is one of the lymphokines secreted by T helper type 1 cells upon activation mediated by T-cell receptor (TCR) and accessory molecules. The ability to express IL-2 is correlated with T-lineage commitment and is regulated during T cell development and differentiation. Understanding the molecular mechanism of how IL-2 gene inducibility is controlled at each transition and each differentiation process of T-cell development is to understand one aspect of T-cell development. In the present study, we first attempted to elucidate the molecular basis for the developmental changes of IL-2 gene inducibility. We showed that IL-2 gene inducibility is acquired early in immature CD4- CD8-TCR- thymocytes prior to TCR gene rearrangement. Similar to mature T cells, a complete set of transcription factors can be induced at this early stage to activate IL-2 gene expression. The progression of these cells to cortical CD4^+CD8^+TCR^(1o) cells is accompanied by the loss of IL-2 gene inducibility. We demonstrated that DNA binding activities of two transcription factors AP-1 and NF-AT are reduced in cells at this stage. Further, the loss of factor binding, especially AP-1, is attributable to the reduced ability to activate expression of three potential components of AP-1 and NF-AT, including c-Fos, FosB, and Fra-2. We next examined the interaction of transcription factors and the IL-2 promoter in vivo by using the EL4 T cell line and two non-T cell lines. We showed an all-or-none phenomenon regarding the factor-DNA interaction, i.e., in activated T cells, the IL-2 promoter is occupied by sequence-specific transcription factors when all the transcription factors are available; in resting T cells or non-T cells, no specific protein-DNA interaction is observed when only a subset of factors are present in the nuclei. Purposefully reducing a particular set of factor binding activities in stimulated T cells using pharmacological agents cyclosporin A or forskolin also abolished all interactions. The results suggest that a combinatorial and coordinated protein-DNA interaction is required for IL-2 gene activation. The thymocyte experiments clearly illustrated that multiple transcription factors are regulated during intrathymic T-cell development, and this regulation in tum controls the inducibility of the lineage-specific IL-2 gene. The in vivo study of protein-DNA interaction stressed the combinatorial action of transcription factors to stably occupy the IL-2 promoter and to initiate its transcription, and provided a molecular mechanism for changes in IL-2 gene inducibility in T cells undergoing integration of multiple environmental signals.

Dirac spectra, summation formulae, and the spectral action

Noncommutative geometry is a source of particle physics models with matter Lagrangians coupled to gravity. One may associate to any noncommutative space (A, H, D) its spectral action, which is defined in terms of the Dirac spectrum of its Dirac operator D. When viewing a spin manifold as a noncommutative space, D is the usual Dirac operator. In this paper, we give nonperturbative computations of the spectral action for quotients of SU(2), Bieberbach manifolds, and SU(3) equipped with a variety of geometries. Along the way we will compute several Dirac spectra and refer to applications of this computation.