Integrating remotely acquired and field data to assess effects of setback levees on riparian and aquatic habitats in glacial‐melt water rivers

Setback levees, in which levees are reconstructed at a greater distance from a river channel, are a promising restoration technique particularly for alluvial rivers with broad floodplains where river‐floodplain connectivity is essential to ecological processes. Documenting the ecological outcomes of restoration activities is essential for assessing the comparative benefits of different restoration approaches and for justifying new restoration projects. Remote sensing of aquatic habitats offers one approach for comprehensive, objective documentation of river and floodplain habitats, but is difficult in glacial rivers because of high suspended‐sediment concentrations, braiding and a lack of large, well‐differentiated channel forms such as riffles and pools. Remote imagery and field surveys were used to assess the effects of recent and planned setback levees along the Puyallup River and, more generally, the application of multispectral imagery for classifying aquatic and riparian habitats in glacial‐melt water rivers. Airborne images were acquired with a horizontal ground resolution of 0.5 m in three spectral bands (0.545–0.555, 0.665–0.675 and 0.790–0.810 µm) spanning from green to near infrared (NIR) wavelengths. Field surveys identified river and floodplain habitat features and provided the basis for a comparative hydraulic analysis. Broad categories of aquatic habitat (smooth and rough water surface), exposed sediment (sand and boulder) and vegetated surfaces (herbaceous and deciduous shrub/forest) were classified accurately using the airborne images. Other categories [e.g. conifers, boulder, large woody debris (LWD)] and subdivisions of broad categories (e.g. riffles and runs) were not successfully classified either because these features did not form large patches that could be identified on the imagery or their spectral reflectances were not distinct from those of other habitat types. Airborne imagery was critical for assessing fine‐scale aquatic habitat heterogeneity including shallow, low‐velocity regions that were not feasible or practical to map in the field in many cases due to their widespread distribution, small size and poorly defined boundaries with other habitat types. At the reach‐scale, the setback levee affected the amount and distribution of riparian and aquatic habitats: (1) the area of all habitats was greater where levees had been set back and with relatively more vegetated floodplain habitat and relatively less exposed sediment and aquatic habitat, (2) where levees confine the river, less low‐velocity aquatic habitat is present over a range of flows with a higher degree of bed instability during high flows. As river restoration proceeds in the Pacific Northwest and elsewhere, remotely acquired imagery will be important for documenting its effects on the amount and distribution of aquatic and floodplain habitats, complimenting field data as a quantitative basis for evaluating project efficacy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A clinically relevant HIV-1 subunit vaccine protects rhesus macaques from in vivo passaged simian-human immunodeficiency virus infection

OBJECTIVES: To investigate whether immunization with recombinant HIV-1 envelope protein derived from a clinical isolate could protect macaques from infection with an in vivo passaged chimeric simian-human immunodeficiency virus (SHIV). DESIGN AND METHODS: A total of 16 animals were studied from which three groups of four animals were immunized with vaccine formulations of the CC-chemokine receptor-5-binding recombinant gp120 of HIV-1W6.1D. Four weeks after the last immunization, all 16 animals were intravenously challenged with in vivo passaged SHIV derived from the same HIV-1 group B clinical isolate (W6.1D) as the vaccines. RESULTS: Vaccine protection from infection was demonstrated in 10 out of 12 macaques immunized with recombinant gp120. Complete protection from infection was achieved with all of the animals that received the SBAS2-W6.1D formulation, a potent inducer of both T-cell and humoral immune responses. Partial protection was achieved with SBAS1-W6.1D, a formulation based on immunomodulators known to induce T-cell responses in humans. In vaccinated animals that were infected, virus load was reduced and infection was delayed. CONCLUSIONS: In a relatively large number of primates, vaccine efficacy was demonstrated with a clinically relevant HIV-1 vaccine. These results reveal that it is possible to induce sterilizing immunity sufficient to protect from infection with SHIV which was passaged multiple times in vivo. Our findings have implications for current HIV-1 clinical vaccine trials and ongoing efforts to develop safe prophylactic AIDS vaccines.     

Climbing longs peak: the steep road to the future of OpenGL.

An essential goal of OpenGL is to provide device independence while still allowing complete access to hardware functionality. The API therefore provides access to graphics operations at the lowest possible level that still provides device independence. In OpenGL, the maximum flexibility provided by individual procedure calls was deemed more important than any inefficiency induced by using those calls. Backward compatibility was seen as one of OpenGL's core strengths, compared to other low-level 3D graphics APIs. All of these extensions were driven by developments in the graphics hardware arena, which changed significantly over the years. The road up Longs Peak can be fairly long and rocky, depending on where you must start. But the view is terrific, and it goes a long way into the future. So, it's definitely worth it. OpenGL Longs Peak will come, and the need for supporting infrastructure will be there.     

Counter-regulation in affective attentional biases: A basic mechanism that warrants flexibility in emotion and motivation.

We investigated whether anticipating positive or negative future outcomes during goal pursuit has a modulatory effect on attentional biases for affectively congruent and incongruent distractor stimuli. In two experiments using a flanker task, we found that distractor interference of stimuli signaling opportunities or dangers was stronger after inducing an outcome focus of the opposite valence. The second experiment provided additional evidence that the incongruency effect reflects a global shift in affective attentional biases and is not mediated by changes in strategies or in the perceived valence of the stimuli. It is argued that counter-regulation in affective attentional biases serves an important function for the regulation of emotion and action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Supply chain relationship quality,the competitive environment and performance

In today's competitive environment, it is supply chains (SC) rather than companies that compete. Empirical research in the area of SC relationships have primarily sought to explain the nature of relationship processes rather than their effect on performance. However, the impact of SC relationship quality on SC performance has received less attention in the literature. Furthermore, the nature of the competitive environment can vary greatly across different supply chains. As such it is appropriate to consider whether or not the effect of SC relationship quality on SC performance is monotonic across different competitive environments. Accordingly, this paper investigates if SC relationship quality has an impact on SC performance quality and whether or not the competitive environment moderates this relationship.     

Verschleißschutz für hochbelastete Umformwerkzeuge

Wear protection for heavy duty forming tools — PVD‐, CVD‐ and laser treatment The PVD‐ or CVD‐ coating of heavy duty tools for cold forging and metal sheet forming is a today's standard for a wide variety of applications in mass production. This article leads into this matter and demonstrates by means of some typical examples the state of the art.     

Treating traumatized OEF/OIF veterans: How does trauma treatment affect the clinician?

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 42(3) of Professional Psychology: Research and Practice (see record 2011-11548-008). The word “While” was erroneously inserted in the first sentence of the “Clinician Factors” section. The correct sentence is stated in the correction.] The authors of this article describe the rewards and challenges for clinicians treating veterans who have served in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) and Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF). Issues of vicarious trauma, secondary traumatic stress, compassion fatigue, and burnout are defined and reviewed, as are compassion satisfaction and posttraumatic growth. Patient, clinician, and organizational characteristics that are likely to affect clinicians working with this clinical population are discussed. Patient factors that may increase strain on clinicians are discussed such as age, likelihood of redeployment, comorbid conditions, attendance issues, and elevated risk for suicide and aggression. Clinician factors, such as theoretical orientation, training, supervision, military affiliation, personal trauma history, spirituality, social support, and self-care, are also discussed as possible risk and protective factors for vicarious trauma and burnout. Organizational influences, such as caseload size and diversity, clinician control and autonomy, use of evidence-based practices, availability of resources, rural isolation, and the philosophy of the clinic, are further discussed. Recommendations for ameliorating risks are discussed relative to each area and include allowing clinicians to plan their own appointments so as to balance their caseload of OEF/OIF veterans, attending to self-care practices, and having a supportive team with thorough training in evidence-based practices. Future empirical research is needed on risk and resiliency factors for clinicians working with traumatized OEF/OIF veterans given that this population is likely to grow. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Complexity of the short-term heart-rate variability

This work has proposed a methodology based on the concept of entropy rates to study the complexity of the short-term heart-rate variability (HRV) for improving risk stratification to predict sudden cardiac death (SCD) of patients with established ischemic-dilated cardiomyopathy (IDC). The short-term HRV was analyzed during daytime and nighttime by means of RR series. An entropy rate was calculated on the RR series, previously transformed to symbol sequences by means of an alphabet. A statistical analysis permitted to stratify high- and low-risk patients of suffering SCD, with a specificity (SP) of 95% and sensitivity (SE) of 83.3%.