Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Mycobacterial Diseases In Wildlife, Gary W. Witmer, Thomas Deliberto, Kurt C. Vercauteren, Peter Butchko

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Mycobacterium infections occur in numerous wildlife species worldwide and this bacterial genus can also cause disease in humans and livestock. Two Mycobacterium species and one subspecies that infect wildlife are important from a wildlife damage management perspective. Mycobacterium avium, avian tuberculosis, is a ubiquitous and cosmopolitan disease of wild and domestic birds. Wild and domestic ruminants are host to M. avium paratuberculosis, also known as Johne’s disease. Finally, Mycobaterium bovis, bovine tuberculosis, is primarily associated with domestic and wild bovines and ungulates, but also infects many other species of mammals. Eradicating these diseases from wildlife populations is …

Management Of Rodent Populations At Airports, Gary W. Witmer, Jessica W. Fantinato

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Birds pose serious hazards at U.S. airports because of the potential for collisions with aircraft. Raptors, in particular, are hazardous to aircraft safety due to their size, hunting behavior, and hovering/soaring habits. Reduction of rodent populations at an airport may decrease raptor populations in the area and therefore, reduce the risk that raptors pose to aircraft. Rodent populations can be reduced by population management (i.e., use of rodenticides) or by habitat management (i.e., vegetation management, barriers, and land uses) that reduces the area’s carrying capacity for rodents. We discuss potential approaches to reduce rodent populations at airports within the context …

Feral Swine---Are They A Disease Threat To Livestock In The United States?, Gary W. Witmer, Robert B. Sanders, Arnold C. Taft

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Feral swine populations provide both benefits and liabilities to citizens of the United States. Their expanding range and increasing densities, however, have raised concern over the adverse environmental and agricultural effects and the increased risk of disease transmission between feral swine and livestock. We discuss the role of feral swine in the transmission of wildlife diseases and, in particular, in diseases of national significance to the livestock industry. We also discuss available management tools and strategies for reducing feral swine populations, minimizing damage or disease occurrences and eradicating populations when deemed appropriate. Finally, we note areas of research that may …

The Use Of Toxicants In Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Management: An Overview, Gary W. Witmer, Kathleen A. Fagerstone

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Black-tailed prairie dogs pose management challenges to landowners and resource managers. They are viewed as either a pest when they cause damage to vegetation or property or pose a disease hazard or, conversely, as a valuable Akeystone@ species representative of reasonably intact prairie ecosystems. When conflicts arise with prairie dog colonies, the two main options are capture and relocation or lethal removal. There are a number of vertebrate toxicants registered for field use in the United States, but few are currently registered for prairie dog control. Only one, zinc phosphide, can be applied above ground as a grain bait. The …

Black-Tailed Prairie Dog Management In Urban-Suburban Settings: Opportunities And Challenges, Gary W. Witmer, Mark Brennan, Donna Dees, Brian Hoffmann, Frances Pusateri, Cary Richardson, David Seery

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

Among the many human-wildlife conflicts that occur across North America, some of the most contentious occur at the interface of urban and suburban lands and adjoining rural landscapes. Along the Colorado Front Range, one of the more difficult situations faced by local governments and municipalities involves black-tailed prairie dog colonies. These colonies are relicts of the expansive colonies that once occurred across much of the prairies of North America. Although these colonies are relatively small and, usually, highly fragmented, they represent an important link to our natural history, provide a valuable wildlife-viewing experience and allow the promotion of public education …

Characteristics Of Mountain Lion Bed, Cache And Kill Sites In Northeastern Oregon, James J. Akenson, M. Cathy Nowak, Mark G. Henjum, Gary W. Witmer

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

We described mountain lion (Puma concolor) habitat characteristics during two studies in the same area of northeastern Oregon during the 1990s. In the first study (1992-1994) we evaluated micro-habitat features associated with 61 diurnal bed sites that were not associated with kills. We used similar techniques in the second study (1996- 1998) to evaluate habitat features at 79 cache sites near lion-killed prey. A dog was used to find 93% of the diurnal bed sites. Radio telemetry triangulation was used in the second study. Characteristics of diurnal bed sites and cache sites were compared with random habitat plots. …

Interactive Multimedia In The Teaching Of The Irish Language In Primary School : Design, Implementation And Development., Máire Lynch

Theses

This thesis focuses on interactive multimedia use specifically in the area of vocabulary acquisition in a second language. It addresses the language learning requirements of third class (nine year olds) language learners, in Primary school. The study is based on existing second language acquisition research, computer - assisted language learning and the design and development of educational multimedia and it delivers an interactive application based on them. The study is firmly rooted in the foundations of the Revised Curriculum for Irish Primary Schools most especially in the language teaching methods it recommends and its emphasis on the use of information …

Sip Message Compression Technique For Efficient Multimedia Services In 3g Wireless Communications, Valerie Kenneally

Theses

The direction of the global cellular industry is primarily determined by two standardisation bodies, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) (in Europe and Asia) and 3GPP2 (in North America). Both of these standardisation bodies are currently specifying a core network to deliver IP based multimedia services over 3G wireless networks. One of the fundamental building blocks of this IP based multimedia core network is the use of SIP (Session Initiation Protocol) as the control protocol. The radio resource, that is the available frequency spectrum, in wireless communication systems remains a limiting factor in terms of the bandwidth available to an …

Analysis Of Phycotoxin And Mycotoxin, Contaminants In Foods, Using Liquid Chromatography - Mass Spectrometry Techniques, Ana Brana Magdalena

Theses

The impact of phycotoxins and mycotoxins on human and animal health are of important concern for worldwide authorities and the scientific community. Liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) techniques have been developed, optimised and validated for the analysis of these toxins.

Phycotoxins are potentially toxic substances, which are produced by marine phytoplankton and which may accumulate in shellfish or finfish. Azaspiracid poisoning (AZP) is a recently discovered syndrome that has been implicated in several incidents of human intoxications. A study was undertaken to examine the distribution of azaspiracids (AZA) in scallops {Pecten maximiis) and mussels {Mytiliis edulis). Domoic acid (DA) is an …

Crafting A Research Paper, Ronan Fitzpatrick, Kevin O'Donnell

Conference papers

Writing research papers presents numerous different challenges, which vary from how to layout the various pages and format the text to what to include in the different sections that make up the paper. In order to clarify these issues this paper sets out guidelines and best practice approaches and demonstrates their use in the style of this paper.

The Nadca Probe, Issue 226

The Probe: Newsletter of the National Animal Damage Control Association

Beaver Management - Nevada 1942-1943
CALENDAR OF UPCOMING EVENTS
Has there ever been a documented case of rats attacking and killing a human?
Humane Education Has Agenda
The "Birdcast" Brought to You By ...
NADCA on the WEB

Finite Subsets Of The Plane Are 18-Reconstructible, L. Pebody, A. J. Radcliffe, A. D. Scott

Department of Mathematics: Faculty Publications

We prove that every finite subset of the plane is reconstructible from the multiset of its subsets of at most 18 points, each given up to rigid motion. We also give some results concerning the reconstructibility of infinite subsets of the plane.

Security Management Education Online, Peter J. Hosie, Clifton L. Smith, Joseph Luca

Research outputs pre 2011

This paper describes the philosophy and pedagogy informing the design and development of Security Science online units. The Physical Security unit is used to illustrate the development of the online learning strategies and interactive activities. Learning materials developed for this course have unique attributes as they were specifically designed to provide simulations and interactivity in the learning process. Field scenarios have been developed for the activities to make the learning experiences as realistic as possible. Simulations and graphics provide these experiences, together with security site images for actual security barriers, systems and technologies. Features of units in the course include …

Sulfate Oxygen-17 Anomaly In An Oligocene Ash Bed In Mid-North America: Was It The Dry Fogs?, Huiming Bao, Mark H. Thiemens, David B. Loope, Xun-Lai Yuan

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences: Faculty Publications

The oxygen and sulfur isotope compositions of sulfate, particularly the oxygen-17 anomaly, provide clues to the origin of sulfate. We report a variable oxygen-17 anomaly for water- and acid-leached sulfate from an Oligocene volcanic ash bed in the northern High Plains, U.S.A. We find no sulfate O-17 anomaly, however, in freshly collected ashes from recent eruptions around the world. The Oligocene paleoclimatic and sedimentary evidence argues against a hyperarid condition in the High Plains, thus a long-term background atmospheric sulfate accumulation is less likely the origin. Combining sulfur isotope data, we suggest that the anomalous sulfate was associated with volcanic …

Applications Of Recursive Estimation Methods In Statistical Process Control, Shelton Peiris, Aerambamoorthy Thavaneswaran, David E. Allen, R. Mellor

Research outputs pre 2011

In recent years there has been a growing interest in recursive estimation techniques as applied to statistical process control (SPC). In cases where prior information about the processes are available, it is shown that procedures based on the “optimal” smoothing can be superior to the classical procedures like Shewhart’s CUSUM control charts (see, for instance, Thavaneswaran, McPherson and Abraham (1998)). This paper reviews the recursive algorithms based on EWMA (exponentially weighted moving average), DLM (dynamic linear modeling), KF (Kalman filtering) and OS (optimal smoothing) in statistical process control with correlated data. We also discuss various relationships among the asymptotic mean …

An Experimental And Theoretical Study Of Transient Negative Ions In Mg, Zn, Cd And Hg, J. P. Sullivan, Paul Burrow, D. S. Newman, K. Bartschat, J. A. Michejda, P. Panajotovic, M. Moghbelalhossein, R. P. Mceachran, Stephen J. Busckman

Paul Burrow Publications

A range of experimental and theoretical techniques have been applied to the study of transient negative ions (resonances) formed in electron scattering from the Group II metals Mg, Zn, Cd, and Hg at incident electron energies below the first ionization potential. A wealth of resonance structures have been observed and from the experimental observations and theoretical information, classifications are proposed for some of these negative ion states.

Erratum: ‘‘Phase Dependence Of Thomson Scattering In An Ultraintense Laser Field’’ Phys. Plasmas 9, 4325 [2002], Fei He, Y. Y. Lau, Donald P. Umstadter, Trevor Strickler

Donald Umstadter Publications

The conclusions of this paper on the frequency scaling of the peak intensity of Thomson scattering of an electron that is initially at rest are restricted to the backscatter direction of the laser. All data were obtained only for the backscatter direction. In the forward direction of the laser, there is no frequency upshift. At an oblique angle that depends on the normalized laser field amplitude, ω/ω₀ ~ O(a³) for large a, where ω₀ is the laser frequency and a is the normalized laser electric field amplitude. Also, in Fig. 3, a = …

On Modeling Protein Superfamilies With Low Primary Sequence Conservation, Stephen Scott, H. Ji, P. Wen, Dmitri E. Fomenko, Vadim N. Gladyshev

CSE Technical Reports

We present several algorithms for identifying thioredoxin (Trx)-fold proteins containing a conserved CxxC motif (two cysteines separated by two residues). The low conservation of primary sequence in this protein superfamily makes conventional methods difficult to use. Therefore, we use structural properties to build our classifiers. These structural properties include secondary structure patterns as well as various properties of the residues in the protein sequences. We use this information to model Trx-fold proteins via hidden Markov models, decision trees, and algorithms in the multipleinstance learning model. In 9-fold and 12-fold jack-knife tests, some of our models performed quite well, with high …

Semantic Web Processes, Jorge Cardoso, Amit P. Sheth

Kno.e.sis Publications

No abstract provided.

Learning Continuous Latent Variable Models With Bregman Divergences, Shaojun Wang, Dale Schuurmans

Kno.e.sis Publications

We present a class of unsupervised statistical learning algorithms that are formulated in terms of minimizing Bregman divergences— a family of generalized entropy measures defined by convex functions. We obtain novel training algorithms that extract hidden latent structure by minimizing a Bregman divergence on training data, subject to a set of non-linear constraints which consider hidden variables. An alternating minimization procedure with nested iterative scaling is proposed to find feasible solutions for the resulting constrained optimization problem. The convergence of this algorithm along with its information geometric properties are characterized.

Web Service: Been There, Done That?, Steffen Staab, Will Van Der Aalst, V. Richard Benjamins, Amit P. Sheth, John A. Miller, Chistoph Bussler, Alexander Maedche, Dieter Fensel, Dennis Gannon

Kno.e.sis Publications

Web services can be defined as loosely coupled, reusable software components that semantically encapsulate discrete functionality and are distributed and programmatically accessible over standard Internet protocols. Web services have received a lot of hype, the reasons for which are not easily determined. Some of their benefits might even seem to waste away, once we touch on the nitty-gritty details, because Web services per se do not offer a solution to underlying problems. The contributions included in this section delve into some of these issues, including: pitfalls of workflow issues; structuring procedural knowledge into problem-solving methods; discussing how a low initial …

Spin-Dependent Tunneling In Magnetic Tunnel Junctions, Evgeny Y. Tsymbal, O. N. Mryasov, Patrick R. Leclair

Evgeny Tsymbal Publications

The phenomenon of electron tunneling has been known since the advent of quantum mechanics, but continues to enrich our understanding of many fields of physics, as well as creating sub-fields on its own. Spin-dependent tunneling in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs) has recently aroused enormous interest and has developed in a vigorous field of research. The large tunneling magnetoresistance (TMR) observed in MTJs garnered much attention due to possible applications in non-volatile random access memories and next-generation magnetic field sensors. This led to a number of fundamental questions regarding the phenomenon of spindependent tunneling. In this review article we present an …

Commentary: The Parameter-Free Track Structure Model Of Scholz And Kraft For Heavy-Ion Cross Sections, Robert Katz

Robert Katz Publications

The "parameter-free", "local effects" theory of Scholz and Kraft is an extension to mammalian cells of the theory of RBE for dry enzymes and viruses of Butts and Katz. Its claim for parameter freedom has been challenged elsewhere. Here we examine its conceptual base and find errors in its use of the physical concept of cross section and its neglect of the radiobiological relationship between target size and radio-sensitivity in evaluating the radiation damage to "point targets".

Low Fluence, Robert Katz, F. A. Cucinotta

Robert Katz Publications

The question of the appropriate extrapolation to low dose has long been a subject of controversy. A linear no-threshold model is favored by regulatory bodies as the basis of RBE assignments and estimates of radiation hazards to the general population. This model is largely supported by extensive application of the linear-quadratic survival formula "fitted" statistically to a wide variety of experimental data obtained at doses typically exceeding 1 Gy, and then extrapolated to mGy for practical applications, and even to the prediction of hazards from single electrons. Such extrapolations are questionable at best, and may even prove hazardous for risk …

Tws Wildlife Damage Management Working Group Newsletter: Vol. 10, Issue 2 Fall 2003

TWS Wildlife Damage Management Working Group Newsletter

Forward ; Working Group Annual Meeting Minutes ; 2003 Wildlife Damage Management Working Group Board Member Ballot; News And Announcements; Executive Board Candidates; Application For Membership / The Wildlife Society

Stable Sulfur Isotope Rations From West Antarctica And The Tien Shan Mountains: Sulfur Cycle Characteristics From Two Environmentally Distinct Areas, Lee Pruett

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Continuous snow pit and ice core samples from two distinct environments (West Antarctica and the Tien Shan mountains in central Asia) were analyzed for 6 3 4 ~ and used to assess different regional sulfur cycle characteristics. In West Antarctica, 18 continuous samples were obtained from the RIDSA ice core (78.73"S, 116.33"W, 1740 m asl), covering the years 1935 to 1976. Each sample represents from 2 to 3 years of snow deposition, and the combination of summer and winter seasons varies by sample. 6 3 4 ~ values range from 3.1 %O to 9.9%0, and reflect the overall isotopic composition …

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Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

No abstract provided.

Understanding Teacher Reflection As A Significant Tool For Bringing Reform-Based Teaching To College Mathematics, K. Jeon

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

This paper describes a senior mathematics professor’s effort to change his teaching practice in a mathematical analysis course for secondary pre-service teachers in alignment with the current reform movement. Data include semester-long observations and interviews with the professor and his students. The data were analyzed by the use of reflection as the most significant tool for examining his experience of bringing about change. The reflection was used as a bridge from theory to practice by serving as a significant point for the professor to experience the process of professional development in a real sense. Discussions include the role of teacher …

Recruiting More Mathematics Teachers Using Collaboration As The Main Ingredient: An Effective Model From Missouri, L. Kaiser

Journal of Mathematics and Science: Collaborative Explorations

A National Science Foundation grant was designed to develop a series of courses to connect mathematics concepts taught in middle school classes with actual class materials used at the middle school level; however, a second component of the grant focused on efforts to recruit more teachers into the field of mathematics. By collaborating with several groups across Missouri, several strategies were developed that were shown to have positive results, both in increasing awareness of mathematics teacher shortage issues, and in encouraging attendance in Missouri mathematics education programs. The strategies developed were easy to implement and low in cost. The Missouri …

Graduate School Of Computer And Information Sciences-Doctoral Degree Programs 2003-2005, Nova Southeastern University

College of Engineering and Computing Course Catalogs

No abstract provided.