Gotowa bibliografia na temat „Incorporated Landon”

Abstract Introduction: Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) of cell-free DNA in plasma, referred to as liquid biopsy, has become a valuable diagnostic tool in clinical oncology. However, detection of variants related to clonal hematopoiesis (CH) is a major confounder that significantly impairs the clinical utility of liquid biopsies. Here we developed a machine-learning model to determine tumor versus CH origin of variants identified in plasma-only NGS. Methods: We assembled a training cohort of 352 variants identified by targeted deep plasma sequencing from 199 patients with stage I-IV breast, colorectal, esophageal, lung, and ovarian cancer, coupled with matched white blood cell (WBC) and tumor tissue NGS to allow determination of the reference origin for each plasma variant. We employed Extreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost) to integrate fragment, variant, gene, and patient level features to predict tumor versus CH plasma variant origin, evaluating the performance of this approach within the training cohort using 10-fold cross-validation. We applied the fixed model to two independent validation cohorts: a small cell lung cancer (SCLC) cohort comprising of 74 variants from targeted plasma NGS from 26 patients and a multi-cancer cohort of 409 variants detected using the MSK-Impact panel from 74 patients with breast, colorectal, and prostate cancer. Results: Variant allele frequencies (VAF) did not differentiate tumor from CH variants, as the VAFs between tumor (median VAF 0.53%) and CH (median VAF 0.409%) variants in the training cohort were largely overlapping (area under the ROC curve-AUC 0.54, 95% confidence interval-CI 0.48-0.61). Similarly, individual fragmentomic features (mutant fragment length, cut points, and endpoint motifs) had limited ability to distinguish tumor from CH variants (AUC range 0.51-0.76). Using serial plasma samples, we identified stable statistical measures of differences in fragment feature distributions between mutant and wild type fragments; these were subsequently incorporated into an XGBoost machine-learning model along with variant, gene and patient features to predict tumor versus CH variant origin. Our model predicted variant origin with an AUC of 0.95 (95% CI 0.87-1) from 10-fold cross validation in the training cohort. The performance of the model was tested in independent SCLC and multi-cancer validation cohorts; the fixed model predicted plasma variant origin with an AUC of 0.87 (95% CI 0.73-1) and 0.89 (95% CI 0.86-0.92) respectively. Conclusion: We developed a machine-learning model that integrates patient, gene, variant and fragment features to predict tumor versus CH origin of plasma variants across solid tumors and NGS sequencing platforms. The ability to identify bona fide tumor variants in plasma-only sequencing fills a critical need in the clinical implementation of liquid biopsy-guided cancer therapy by reducing misinterpretation due to CH contamination. Citation Format: Jenna V. Canzoniero, Archana Balan, Jillian Phallen, Blair V. Landon, Lavanya Sivapalan, Benjamin Green, Zineb Belcaid, Susan C. Scott, Gavin Pereira, Vincent K. Lam, Ali H. Zaidi, Ronan J. Kelly, Christine L. Hann, Wade T. Iams, Christine M. Lovly, Patrick M. Forde, Gerrit A. Meijer, Geraldine R. Vink, Remond J. Fijneman, The MEDOCC Group, Victor E. Velculescu, Robert B. Scharpf, Valsamo Anagnostou. A machine learning approach to determine the cellular origin of variants in liquid biopsies [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3366.

The city of Huancayo, like other intermediate cities in Latin America, faces problems of poorly planned land-use changes and a rapid dynamic of the urban land market. The scarce and outdated information on the urban territory impedes the adequate classification of urban areas, limiting the form of its intervention. The purpose of this research was the adoption of unassisted and mixed methods for the spatial classification of urban areas, considering the speculative land value, the proportion of urbanized land, and other geospatial variables. Among the data collection media, Multi-Spectral Imagery (MSI) from the Sentinel-2 satellite, the primary road system, and a sample of direct observation points, were used. The processed data were incorporated into georeferenced maps, to which urban limits and official slopes were added. During data processing, the K-Means algorithm was used, together with other machine learning and assisted judgment methods. As a result, an objective classification of urban areas was obtained, which differs from the existing planning.

This article analyses the discourse and opinion of agronomists on the manure problem in Belgium during the years 1970-1991. Based on a careful reading of the Belgian Landbouwtijdschrift (Agricultural Magazine), supplemented with secondary sources, four conclusions can be drawn. Firstly, already in the 1970s these agricultural experts warned for an injudicious use of pig manure, which caused nuisance to the environment and local residents. Without referring to the concept of ‘sustainability’, the agronomists did in fact incorporate economic and ecological aspects into their analysis. Secondly, Belgian agricultural experts, inspired by studies and colleagues in other countries, opted for technical solutions. Only seldom did they plea for strong state intervention. Thirdly, the Belgian government intervened only in the course of the 1980s, when the consequences of over-fertilisation threatened to have concrete and recognisable consequences for citizens, and with regard to the quality of drinking water in particular. These legislative initiatives occurred in parallel with a growing environmental awareness within society at large, a deeper understanding of the long-term environmental effects and the introduction of more stringent European environmental legislation. Fourthly, the Manure Decree of 1991 did not bring about a radical revolution in Belgian agriculture. Its primary focus was the supervision and management of the existing manure circuit, rather than on a structural reduction of the surpluses. Dit artikel analyseert het discours van landbouwkundigen over de mestproblematiek in België in de jaren 1970-1991. Op basis van een zorgvuldige lezing van het Landbouwtijdschrift, aangevuld met secundaire bronnen, kunnen vier conclusies worden getrokken. Ten eerste waarschuwden de landbouwdeskundigen reeds in de jaren 1970 voor een onoordeelkundig gebruik van varkensmest, met overlast voor milieu en omwonenden tot gevolg. Zonder te verwijzen naar het begrip ‘duurzaamheid’, namen de agronomen wel degelijk economische en ecologische aspecten mee in hun analyse. Ten tweede kozen Belgische landbouwexperts, geïnspireerd door studies en collega’s in andere landen, vooral voor technische oplossingen. Slechts zelden pleitten zij voor overheidsingrijpen. Ten derde reageerde de Belgische overheid pas in de loop van de jaren 1980, toen de gevolgen van de overbemesting concrete gevolgen dreigden te hebben voor de burger, namelijk een daling van de drinkwaterkwaliteit. De eerste wetgevende initiatieven liepen parallel met een groeiend maatschappelijk milieubewustzijn, een beter begrip van de milieueffecten op lange termijn en de invoering van een strengere Europese milieuwetgeving. Tenslotte zorgde het Mestdecreet in 1991 niet voor een radicale omwenteling in de Belgische landbouw. De primaire focus lag immers op het toezicht en beheer van het bestaande mestcircuit, en niet op een structurele vermindering van de overschotten.

Abstract Introduction: There is a critical need to incorporate molecular assessments of minimal residual disease (MRD) during neoadjuvant immunotherapy, in order to identify individuals at high risk for disease recurrence based on analyses of circulating cell-free tumor DNA (ctDNA) landscapes. Here we employed longitudinal liquid biopsies to dynamically assess clinical outcomes with neoadjuvant immuno-chemoradiotherapy in patients with esophageal/gastroesophageal junction (E/GEJ) cancer. Methods: We utilized targeted error-correction sequencing to perform high-depth ctDNA next-generation sequencing for 141 serial plasma and 32 matched white blood cell (WBC) DNA samples from 32 patients with operable stage II/III E/GEJ cancer that received neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) with chemoradiotherapy prior to surgery (NCT03044613). ctDNA analyses were performed at baseline, post-ICB induction, after completion of chemoradiotherapy (pre-op), and post-operatively (post-op). Using a tumor-agnostic WBC DNA-informed panel NGS approach we determined the cellular origin of plasma variants, filtering out germline and clonal hematopoiesis (CH) variants and evaluated ctDNA clonal dynamics over time. Molecular MRD was evaluated post-ICB, pre-op and post-op and correlated with recurrence-free (RFS) and overall survival (OS). Results: Twenty out of 32 patients had detectable ctDNA at any timepoint. Of the 12 patients with undetectable ctDNA, 9 had only CH- and/or germline-derived variants, while 3 patients had no detectable variants of any origin. ctDNA clearance post-ICB was correlated with tumor regression >80% at the time of resection (Fischer’s exact p=0.04). The subset of patients that did not attain complete pathologic response was heterogeneous with respect to ctDNA dynamics; such that ctDNA clearance pre-op identified patients with longer OS despite residual tumor of >0% at the time of resection (log rank p=0.06). Patients with undetectable ctDNA or ctDNA clearance pre-op had a longer RFS (log rank p=0.007) and OS (log rank p=0.03). Molecular MRD was associated with RFS and OS such that patients with ctDNA clearance post-op had longer RFS (log-rank p=0.007) and OS (log-rank p=0.017). Conclusion: ctDNA clearance post-ICB, pre-op and post-op reflects differential clinical outcomes for patients with E/GEJ cancer receiving neoadjuvant immuno-chemoradiotherapy. Understanding ctDNA dynamics and their relationship with pathological response and long-term outcomes can help identify patients at higher risk for recurrence and open a therapeutic window for future intervention. Citation Format: Blair V. Landon, Ronan J. Kelly, Ali H. Zaidi, Archana Balan, Jenna V. Canzoniero, Gavin Pereira, Zineb Belcaid, Russell K. Hales, K Ranh Voong, Richard J. Battafarano, Blair A. Jobe, Stephen C. Yang, Stephen Broderick, Jinny Ha, Kellie N. Smith, Elizabeth Thompson, Fyza Y. Shaikh, James R. White, Cynthia L. Sears, Eun J. Shin, Ali I. Amjad, Benny Weksler, Josephine L. Feliciano, Chen Hu, Vincent K. Lam, Valsamo Anagnostou. Circulating cell-free tumor DNA dynamics capture minimal residual disease with neoadjuvant immune checkpoint blockade plus chemoradiotherapy for patients with operable esophageal/gastroesophageal junction cancer [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2023; Part 1 (Regular and Invited Abstracts); 2023 Apr 14-19; Orlando, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2023;83(7_Suppl):Abstract nr 3374.

Abstract DICER1 syndrome is a cancer predisposition syndrome where affected patients have increased risk of neoplasms including pleuropulmonary blastoma, Sertoli-Leydig cell tumor, and fusion-negative rhabdomyosarcoma (FN-RMS). This syndrome is defined by germline heterozygous loss of function mutations in the gene DICER1, but it remains unclear exactly how these mutations predispose children to develop cancer. One would expect the germline loss of one allele to provide a sensitized background in the tumor cell to acquire a second hit mutation. To gain insight into the role of Dicer1 loss in FN-RMS, we deleted the Dicer1 gene both globally in the germline and conditionally in the tumor cell in our previously established mouse model of FN-RMS. Surprisingly, we observed faster tumor onset and increased penetrance in mice with germline heterozygous Dicer1 loss (Dicer1+/-) but not in mice where Dicer1 loss was restricted to the tumor cells, demonstrating that Dicer1 functions as a non-cell autonomous haploinsufficient tumor suppressor. Single cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-Seq) revealed massive expansion of immature neutrophils in Dicer1+/- tumors, which were enriched for proteases associated with neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). NETs are webs of chromatin and proteases released when neutrophils undergo NETosis in response to inflammatory stimuli. These NETs are known to cause significant damage to the local extracellular matrix (ECM) and have been implicated in tumor promotion. In addition to the neutrophil enriched immunophenotype, we found that Dicer1+/- tumors show significant ECM remodeling and are enriched for C5a, the potent neutrophil chemoattractant and NET-priming factor. Taken together, these results suggest NETosis is upregulated in Dicer1+/- FN-RMS tumors. Performing iTALK ligand-receptor pair analysis on the scRNA-Seq data revealed a putative interaction between a NET-derived ligand and EGFR and IGF1R on tumor cells, suggesting direct tumor promoting signaling from NET-to-tumor. We validated this novel FN-RMS promotion mechanism in vitro using human FN-RMS cell lines and observed that this NET-derived ligand promoted FN-RMS growth in a dose-dependent manner and could function through both EGFR and IGF1R signaling. Finally, we incorporated a Padi4-/- allele into our tumor model to genetically block NETosis and observed complete rescue of the accelerated tumor onset and increased penetrance observed in Dicer1+/- mice, demonstrating that NETosis promotes the growth of Dicer1+/- FN-RMS tumors. Importantly, these findings may be applicable to many DICER1 syndrome-associated cancers, as neutrophils which get converted to tumor promoters by heterozygous DICER1 loss are present in DICER1 syndrome patients regardless of tumor type. Citation Format: Randolph Larsen, Jason Hanna, Kristin Reed, Hongjian Jin, Wood Kimbrough, Kyna Vuong, Myron Evans, Casey Langdon, Catherine Drummond, Matthew Garcia, David Finkelstein, Patrick Schreiner, Jerold Rehg, Mark Hatley. Germline DICER1 loss promotes rhabdomyosarcoma via innate immune system [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the American Association for Cancer Research Annual Meeting 2024; Part 1 (Regular Abstracts); 2024 Apr 5-10; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2024;84(6_Suppl):Abstract nr 5463.

SUMMARY What Language Contact Models Can Result from Our Indian Research Experience? This paper is the result of a conference in Nice (1987) on Language Contact: What Models? We tried to reply to this question by proposing two models, namely: (1) language development, a model that allows us to measure development in terms of language vitality and (2) language contact, a more general model, which takes into account the broader social context. These two models derive from a survey carried out in India from 1982 to 1985 on the written languages of that country. The survey's object was primarily to provide the government with a detailed description of the functional role of each language in the social life of the country. But, in a secondary analysis, the survey provided a model of language development (see above), which enables us to calculate in quantitative terms the linguistic vitality of each language. This was done by analyzing the functional aspect of the social (institutional) dimension, by (1) domain and (2) institutional levels, on the one hand, and by (3) functions (frequency) and (4) products (quantity) on the other. The model of language contact also incorporates the vitality concept, but the perspective is much wider. It is rare to find only one language, so the model must take into consideration the functional interaction of all languages present and the resulting effects of this on vitality. Next, the total social environment and its importance must be measured through variables or groups of variables, which can also influence language vitality. This allows us to propose hypotheses on the importance of the language and social environments on changing vitality rates. The paper concludes by clearly placing the above research in the macro sphere (sociology of language) and considers the above inductive models based on hard data a useful way of approaching a theory of language in society, which has yet to be constructed. RESUMO Kiuj lingvokontaktaj modeloj povas rezulti el la esploraj spertoj en Hindio? Tiu ci verko rezultas el konferenco en Nico (1987) pri Lingva kontakto: Kiuj modeloj? Ni provis respondi tiun demandon per propono de du modeloj, nome: (l) modelo de lingva evoluo, kiu ebligas nin mezuri evoluon laŭ lingva vivanteco kaj (2) lingva kontakto, pli ĝenerala modelo, kiu prenas en konsideron la pli vastan socian kuntekston. La du modeloj fontas el enketo farita en Hindio inter 1982 kaj 1985 pri la tiulandaj skribitaj lingvoj. La ĉefa celo de la enketo estis liveri al la registaro detalan priskribon de la funkcia rolo de ĉiu lingvo en la socia vivo de la lando. Sed per dua analizo la enketo donis modelon de lingva evoluo (vidu ĉi-supre), kiu ebligas kvalitan kalkulon de la lingva vivanteco de ĉiu lingvo. Tion ni faris analizante la funkcian aspekton de la socia (insti-tucia) dimensio, laŭ (1) medio kaj (2) instituciaj niveloj, unuflanke, kaj laŭ (3) funkcioj (ofteco) kaj (4) produktoj (kvanto), aliflanke. La lingvokontakta modelo ankaŭ enhavas la koncepton de vivanteco, sed laŭ multe pli vasta perspektivo. Malofte oni trovas nur unu lingvon, kaj sekve la modelo devas preni en konsideron la funkcian interagon de ciuj ceestantaj lingvoj kaj la rezultajn efikojn de cio ci je vivanteco. Krome, oni devas mezuri la kompletan socian medion kaj ĝian gravecon per variecoj kaj variecogrupoj, kiuj ankaŭ povas influi lingvovivantecon. Tio ebligas proponi hipotezojn pri la graveco de la lingva kaj socia medioj je ŝanĝiĝantaj niveloj de vivanteco. La verko finiĝas lokante la ĉi-suprajn esplorojn en la makro-sferon (lingva sociologio) kaj konsideras la ĉi-suprajn induktajn modelojn, bazitajn je firmaj donitaĵoj, utila maniero aliri teorion de lingvo en socio, ankoraŭ konstruotan.

The article examines the seminal novels of Ukrainian women writers from the first and second decades of the 21st century, namely “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” (“Музей покинутих секретів”, 2009) by O. Zabuzhko and “The Beech Land” (“Букова земля”, 2019) by M. Matios. The selected works are analyzed through the lens of postcolonial criticism, that is, from the point of view of the historical experience of the statelessness of the Ukrainian community and its reflection in literary texts. The main attention is paid to the narrative features of the works, namely the tendency to broad narrative, integrity, and narrative completeness. The purpose of the study is to highlight the postcolonial content of the narrative strategies implemented in the selected novels by O. Zabuzhko and M. Matios. Given that “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” and “The Beech Land” represent different periods and ideological and aesthetic paradigms, namely postmodernism and metamodernism, one of the tasks of the study is to assert the relevance of postcolonialism in the context of metamodernism. The article aims to highlight the peculiarities of the artistic realization of “postcolonial” narrativity in postmodern and metamodern texts. Additionally, the narrative features of the selected novels are compared. The stated purpose necessitates the application of hermeneutic (interpretation of a literary text), comparative (identification of common and distinctive features of the selected works) methods, as well as the method of structural analysis (examining the narrative structure of the texts). As a result of the study, it is established that postcolonialism, inherent in Ukrainian postmodern prose, remains relevant in the second decade of the twenty-first century. The postcolonial orientation of the novels “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” and “The Beech Land” is manifested in their intention to affirm the continuity of Ukrainian history by building a panoramic narrative that covers different historical periods and establishes a hereditary connection between them. The study identified the following features common to both novels: the intertwining of family genealogy with national history; the development of narratives at different generational levels – children, parents, grandparents, etc.; the theme of the perpetual war for independence that continues to this day; the image of God as a transcendent guardian of history, capable of seeing the intertwining of human destinies in their entirety. The defining theme shared by both novels is the anti-colonial struggle, particularly the military campaign of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. This theme necessitates depicting the tragic consequences of imperial oppression. In “The Beech Land”, these are devastation and turmoil, fratricide, ruptured familial ties, the destruction of the Bukovynian “utopia”. In “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets”, these repercussions are shown through the lens of postmodern hypertextuality – as “burnt manuscripts”, irretrievably lost archives, fragmented stories. In addition, the selected novels exhibit an inclination to transcend the boundaries of realistic storytelling. Employing the montage technique, “The Museum of Abandoned Secrets” incorporates a mystical discourse of dreams that operates as a parallel reality, recounting events of the past. The oneiric discourse resonates with the image of an endless virtual archive storing memories of everything that has ever happened in the world. In “The Beech Land”, the departure from realistic historiography occurs through metamodern fantastisation, where the historical panorama is framed by the story of the “Heavenly Chancellery” – a celestial archive inhabited by the Creator and the Angels. The appeal to mystical and imaginative discourses is interpreted as a manifestation of postcolonial longing for lost integrity and completeness. The images of endless imaginary repositories of information complement the incompleteness of history, aiding in overcoming its fragmentary nature and opacity.

Nine-year old Eliza is a student at Meadows Elementary School where she receives special education services for her diagnosis of Emotional Disturbance. Her teachers are working together to try to bring Eliza back into the classroom after weeks of time spent in the office with no contact with her peers. Mr. Jimenez and Ms. Landon are collaborating to incorporate trauma-informed practices into their classrooms in an attempt to address the absence of secure attachments and feelings of safety in Eliza’s life, as well as her inability to control her emotional responses. Creating a trauma-informed classroom benefits everyone but especially students with disabilities who have experienced trauma. In this paper we discuss the need for trauma-informed practices and strategies for making classroom environments more trauma-informed.

Author's Note: The Theme of the Loop: Image, Exhibition and Networkability In his contribution to the anthology, The Digital Dialectic, George P. Landow inventories a set of characteristics that define digital media. These defining traits result from a hybrid mixture of ideas relating hypertext writing to the visual language of collage. Included in this list is the quality of "networkability".1 It is through reading into this particular element that I will focus on the character of the digital image itself as multi-dimensional and how, by extension, this enmeshes notions of the image within a wider network of relations; of image to the imaginary, of vision to visuality, and of artwork to exhibition. Underpinning this text will be my curatorial "projection"2—using the term as it is articulated by Ron Burnett as an active, interpenetration of the processes of vision, representation, technology and the imagination—of the digital image culminating in the exhibition, The Synthetic Image.3 The exhibition presents the work of thirteen artists working within the vectors that define imaging practices informed by new technologies. Exploring the relationship between the real and the virtual, the selected artists and artworks exemplify the crossover between a variety of digital and interactive media informed by other artistic traditions and individual positions on the role of the image in representing, simulating or creating realities. The perspective of this project views the relationship between digital technologies and the image as a synthetic one. Recognizing the ability to double and fold in the malleability of the material from which the digital image is composed, the dichotomy of inside and outside collapses. Instead of conceiving, visualizing pixels as a solid, impenetrable grid, I've tried, rather, to recognize in this resulting surface the qualities of a fabric, as a mesh of interpenetrating, weaving fibres. Instead of the content of the image being contained in the "solid" pixels, it is implied in the "threads" of the screen holding together the field of relationships, looping like a closed electrical or magnetic circuit. The vectors of relationship bound the "empty" image; fastening, holding together and forming the picture. In many ways my approach to this topic (as artist, curator and, in this immediate guise, as author) finds expression in the term "synthesis" defined as a "rhythmic coexistence of radically heterogenous and temporally dispersed elements".4 The virtuality of this thing called an "exhibition" is approached as a narrative space; a fluid, complex epistemological environment. The curatorial role makes evident the subtext of diverse strands connecting respective works and artists and collects them in the space of the gallery in an attempt to draw them into the "loop." The exhibition/ installation operates by gathering together disparate components into what is as much a "context" as a physical and spatial realization. The choice and arrangement of artworks, displayed as printed images or encountered as fleeting emanations of light, creates channels of communication where meaning is more than implied, and can be likened to the type of referentiality associated with that of the image produced by projection and the apparatus of the projector itself. Considered in this way, even static images, fixed into pigment on paper, operate luminously, acting like beacons which together form a constellation of points creating lines of force, motion, influence and meaning; the exhibition itself is a loop structure which enfolds and encircles its incorporated range of (inter, hyper, meta and para) textual components. The writing also parallels a similarly conceived and structured trajectory towards the metaphor of the loop. At its inception, I developed a graphic visualization of the textual content of this text, meditating upon the interrelationships of the synthetic qualities of the image fused with a mapping of theoretical positionings and the example provided through the exhibition itself. This diagram of sorts resulted in a narrative structure which collects the various themes (mesh, weave, wire frame, map, moire and screen) within the text's centrifugal sweep, overlapping with the artists' works comprising the exhibition, and made possible by the navigation structure realized by Leon Meyer. In exploring the formal possibilities offered by hypertext, multiple vantage points and intersections result from the folding and overlapping of image and text. As with crumpling the written page into a ball,5 synthetic qualities are realized. Enter "The Synthetic Image". To view this hypertextual essay, you will need to download the latest version of Macromedia Shockwave. Notes 1. "Digital words and images take the form of semiotic codes, and this fundamental fact about them leads to the characteristic, defining qualities of digital infotech: 1) virtuality, (2) fluidity, (3) adaptability, (4) openness (or existing without borders), (5) processability, (6) infinite duplicability, (7) capacity for being moved about rapidly, and (8) networkability." George P. Landow, "Hypertext as Collage-writing," The Digital Dialectic, ed. Peter Lunenfeld (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 2000) 166. 2. "There may be no better time than now (with virtual technologies inching closer to realization) to rethink what we mean when we talk about pictures and what we are capable of saying with the pictures we create. One of my aims then, is to discuss strategies for renaming and redescribing (thus reinterpreting), not only the pictures themselves, but circular processes of interaction, the relationships between images, thought, language and subjectivity." Ron Burnett, Cultures of Vision, Images, Media, and the Imaginary (Bloomington: U of Indiana P, 1995) 24. 3. The Synthetic Image, 8 July 4 August 2002, The Faculty Gallery, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. The artists represented are Marcus Bunyan, Megan Evans, Marcus Fajl, Phil George, Troy Innocent, Murray McKeich, Gerard Minogue, Matthew Perkins, Patricia Piccinini, Lynne Roberts-Goodwin, Daniel Von Sturmer, Trinh Vu and Vince Dziekan. 4. Jonathan Crary, Suspensions of Perception, Attention, Spectacle, and Modern Culture (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999) 297. 5. This allusion finds an intertextual reference in Daniel von Sturmer's video piece Material From Another Medium included in the exhibition's inventory. Links http://happyjack.artdes.monash.edu.au/syntheticimage/ Citation reference for this article MLA Style Dziekan, Vince. "The Synthetic Image" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.4 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/synthetic.php>. Chicago Style Dziekan, Vince, "The Synthetic Image" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 4 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/synthetic.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Dziekan, Vince. (2002) The Synthetic Image. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(4). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/mc/0208/synthetic.php> ([your date of access]).

What strikes me about the habits of the people who spend so much time on the Net—well, it’s so new that we don't know what will come next—is in fact precisely how niche in character it is. You ask people what nets they are on, and they’re all so specialised! The Argentines on the Argentine Net and so forth. And it’s particularly the Argentines who are not in Argentina. (Anderson, in Gower, par. 5) The preceding quotation, taken from his 1996 interview with Eric Gower, sees Benedict Anderson reflecting on the formation of imagined, transnational communities on the Internet. Anderson is, of course, famous for his work on how nationalism, as an “imagined community,” gets constructed through the shared consumption of print media (6-7, 26-27); although its readers will never all see each other face to face, people consuming a newspaper or novel in a shared language perceive themselves as members of a collective. In this more recent interview, Anderson recognised the specific groupings of people in online communities: Argentines who find themselves outside of Argentina link up online in an imagined diaspora community. Over the course of the last decade and a half since Anderson spoke about Argentinian migrants and diaspora communities, we have witnessed an exponential growth of new forms of digital communication, including social networking sites (e.g. Facebook), Weblogs, micro-blogging (e.g. Twitter), and video-sharing sites (e.g. YouTube). Alongside these new means of communication, our current epoch of globalisation is also characterised by migration flows across, and between, all continents. In his book Modernity at Large, Arjun Appadurai recognised that “the twin forces of mass migration and electronic mediation” have altered the ways the imagination operates. Furthermore, these two pillars, human motion and digital mediation, are in constant “flux” (44). The circulation of people and digitally mediatised content proceeds across and beyond boundaries of the nation-state and provides ground for alternative community and identity formations. Appadurai’s intervention has resulted in increasing awareness of local, transnational, and global networking flows of people, ideas, and culturally hybrid artefacts. In this article, we analyse the various innovative tactics taken up by migrant youth to imagine digital diasporas. Inspired by scholars such as Appadurai, Avtar Brah and Paul Gilroy, we tease out—from a postcolonial perspective—how digital diasporas have evolved over time from a more traditional understanding as constituted either by a vertical relationship to a distant homeland or a horizontal connection to the scattered transnational community (see Safran, Cohen) to move towards a notion of “hypertextual diaspora.” With hypertextual diaspora, these central axes which constitute the understanding of diaspora are reshuffled in favour of more rhizomatic formations where affiliations, locations, and spaces are constantly destabilised and renegotiated. Needless to say, diasporas are not homogeneous and resist generalisation, but in this article we highlight common ways in which young migrant Internet users renew the practices around diaspora connections. Drawing from research on various migrant populations around the globe, we distinguish three common strategies: (1) the forging of transnational public spheres, based on maintaining virtual social relations by people scattered across the globe; (2) new forms of digital diasporic youth branding; and (3) the cultural production of innovative hypertexts in the context of more rhizomatic digital diaspora formations. Before turning to discuss these three strategies, the potential of a postcolonial framework to recognise multiple intersections of diaspora and digital mediation is elaborated. Hypertext as a Postcolonial Figuration Postcolonial scholars, Appadurai, Gilroy, and Brah among others, have been attentive to diasporic experiences, but they have paid little attention to the specificity of digitally mediated diaspora experiences. As Maria Fernández observes, postcolonial studies have been “notoriously absent from electronic media practice, theory, and criticism” (59). Our exploration of what happens when diasporic youth go online is a first step towards addressing this gap. Conceptually, this is clearly an urgent need since diasporas and the digital inform each other in the most profound and dynamic of ways: “the Internet virtually recreates all those sites which have metaphorically been eroded by living in the diaspora” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 396). Writings on the Internet tend to favour either the “gold-rush” mentality, seeing the Web as a great equaliser and bringer of neoliberal progress for all, or the more pessimistic/technophobic approach, claiming that technologically determined spaces are exclusionary, white by default, masculine-oriented, and heteronormative (Everett 30, Van Doorn and Van Zoonen 261). For example, the recent study by Ito et al. shows that young people are not interested in merely performing a fiction in a parallel online world; rather, the Internet gets embedded in their everyday reality (Ito et al. 19-24). Real-life commercial incentives, power hierarchies, and hegemonies also get extended to the digital realm (Schäfer 167-74). Online interaction remains pre-structured, based on programmers’ decisions and value-laden algorithms: “people do not need a passport to travel in cyberspace but they certainly do need to play by the rules in order to function electronically” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Narratives” 405). We began our article with a statement by Benedict Anderson, stressing how people in the Argentinian diaspora find their space on the Internet. Online avenues increasingly allow users to traverse and add hyperlinks to their personal websites in the forms of profile pages, the publishing of preferences, and possibilities of participating in and affiliating with interest-based communities. Online journals, social networking sites, streaming audio/video pages, and online forums are all dynamic hypertexts based on Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) coding. HTML is the protocol of documents that refer to each other, constituting the backbone of the Web; every text that you find on the Internet is connected to a web of other texts through hyperlinks. These links are in essence at equal distance from each other. As well as being a technological device, hypertext is also a metaphor to think with. Figuratively speaking, hypertext can be understood as a non-hierarchical and a-centred modality. Hypertext incorporates multiplicity; different pathways are possible simultaneously, as it has “multiple entryways and exits” and it “connects any point to any other point” (Landow 58-61). Feminist theorist Donna Haraway recognised the dynamic character of hypertext: “the metaphor of hypertext insists on making connections as practice.” However, she adds, “the trope does not suggest which connections make sense for which purposes and which patches we might want to follow or avoid.” We can begin to see the value of approaching the Internet from the perspective of hypertext to make an “inquiry into which connections matter, why, and for whom” (128-30). Postcolonial scholar Jaishree K. Odin theorised how hypertextual webs might benefit subjects “living at the borders.” She describes how subaltern subjects, by weaving their own hypertextual path, can express their multivocality and negotiate cultural differences. She connects the figure of hypertext with that of the postcolonial: The hypertextual and the postcolonial are thus part of the changing topology that maps the constantly shifting, interpenetrating, and folding relations that bodies and texts experience in information culture. Both discourses are characterised by multivocality, multilinearity, openendedness, active encounter, and traversal. (599) These conceptions of cyberspace and its hypertextual foundations coalesce with understandings of “in-between”, “third”, and “diaspora media space” as set out by postcolonial theorists such as Bhabha and Brah. Bhabha elaborates on diaspora as a space where different experiences can be articulated: “These ‘in-between’ spaces provide the terrain for elaborating strategies of selfhood—singular or communal—that initiate new signs of identity, and innovative sites of collaboration, and contestation (4). (Dis-)located between the local and the global, Brah adds: “diaspora space is the point at which boundaries of inclusion and exclusion, of belonging and otherness, of ‘us’ and ‘them,’ are contested” (205). As youths who were born in the diaspora have begun to manifest themselves online, digital diasporas have evolved from transnational public spheres to differential hypertexts. First, we describe how transnational public spheres form one dimension of the mediation of diasporic experiences. Subsequently, we focus on diasporic forms of youth branding and hypertext aesthetics to show how digitally mediated practices can go beyond and transgress traditional formations of diasporas as vertically connected to a homeland and horizontally distributed in the creation of transnational public spheres. Digital Diasporas as Diasporic Public Spheres Mass migration and digital mediation have led to a situation where relationships are maintained over large geographical distances, beyond national boundaries. The Internet is used to create transnational imagined audiences formed by dispersed people, which Appadurai describes as “diasporic public spheres”. He observes that, as digital media “increasingly link producers and audiences across national boundaries, and as these audiences themselves start new conversations between those who move and those who stay, we find a growing number of diasporic public spheres” (22). Media and communication researchers have paid a lot of attention to this transnational dimension of the networking of dispersed people (see Brinkerhoff, Alonso and Oiarzabal). We focus here on three examples from three different continents. Most famously, media ethnographers Daniel Miller and Don Slater focused on the Trinidadian diaspora. They describe how “de Rumshop Lime”, a collective online chat room, is used by young people at home and abroad to “lime”, meaning to chat and hang out. Describing the users of the chat, “the webmaster [a Trini living away] proudly proclaimed them to have come from 40 different countries” (though massively dominated by North America) (88). Writing about people in the Greek diaspora, communication researcher Myria Georgiou traced how its mediation evolved from letters, word of mouth, and bulletins to satellite television, telephone, and the Internet (147). From the introduction of the Web, globally dispersed people went online to get in contact with each other. Meanwhile, feminist film scholar Anna Everett draws on the case of Naijanet, the virtual community of “Nigerians Living Abroad”. She shows how Nigerians living in the diaspora from the 1990s onwards connected in global transnational communities, forging “new black public spheres” (35). These studies point at how diasporic people have turned to the Internet to establish and maintain social relations, give and receive support, and share general concerns. Establishing transnational communicative networks allows users to imagine shared audiences of fellow diasporians. Diasporic imagination, however, goes beyond singular notions of this more traditional idea of the transnational public sphere, as it “has nowadays acquired a great figurative flexibility which mostly refers to practices of transgression and hybridisation” (Ponzanesi, “Diasporic Subjects” 208). Below we recognise another dimension of digital diasporas: the articulation of diasporic attachment for branding oneself. Mocro and Nikkei: Diasporic Attachments as a Way to Brand Oneself In this section, we consider how hybrid cultural practices are carried out over geographical distances. Across spaces on the Web, young migrants express new forms of belonging in their dealing with the oppositional motivations of continuity and change. The generational specificity of this experience can be drawn out on the basis of the distinction between “roots” and “routes” made by Paul Gilroy. In his seminal book The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness, Gilroy writes about black populations on both sides of the Atlantic. The double consciousness of migrant subjects is reflected by affiliating roots and routes as part of a complex cultural identification (19 and 190). As two sides of the same coin, roots refer to the stable and continuing elements of identities, while routes refer to disruption and change. Gilroy criticises those who are “more interested in the relationship of identity to roots and rootedness than in seeing identity as a process of movement and mediation which is more appropriately approached via the homonym routes” (19). He stresses the importance of not just focusing on one of either roots or routes but argues for an examination of their interplay. Forming a response to discrimination and exclusion, young migrants in online networks turn to more positive experiences such as identification with one’s heritage inspired by generational specific cultural affiliations. Here, we focus on two examples that cross two continents, showing routed online attachments to “be(com)ing Mocro”, and “be(coming) Nikkei”. Figure 1. “Leipe Mocro Flavour” music video (Ali B) The first example, being and becoming “Mocro”, refers to a local, bi-national consciousness. The term Mocro originated on the streets of the Netherlands during the late 1990s and is now commonly understood as a Dutch honorary nickname for youths with Moroccan roots living in the Netherlands and Belgium. A 2003 song, Leipe mocro flavour (“Crazy Mocro Flavour”) by Moroccan-Dutch rapper Ali B, familiarised a larger group of people with the label (see Figure 1). Ali B’s song is exemplary for a wider community of youngsters who have come to identify themselves as Mocros. One example is the Marokkanen met Brainz – Hyves (Mo), a community page within the Dutch social networking site Hyves. On this page, 2,200 youths who identify as Mocro get together to push against common stereotypes of Moroccan-Dutch boys as troublemakers and thieves and Islamic Moroccan-Dutch girls as veiled carriers of backward traditions (Leurs, forthcoming). Its description reads, “I assume that this Hyves will be the largest [Mocro community]. Because logically Moroccans have brains” (our translation): What can you find here? Discussions about politics, religion, current affairs, history, love and relationships. News about Moroccan/Arabic Parties. And whatever you want to tell others. Use your brains. Second, “Nikkei” directs our attention to Japanese migrants and their descendants. The Discover Nikkei website, set up by the Japanese American National Museum, provides a revealing description of being and becoming Nikkei: As Nikkei communities form in Japan and throughout the world, the process of community formation reveals the ongoing fluidity of Nikkei populations, the evasive nature of Nikkei identity, and the transnational dimensions of their community formations and what it means to be Nikkei. (Japanese American National Museum) This site was set up by the Japanese American National Museum for Nikkei in the global diaspora to connect and share stories. Nikkei youths of course also connect elsewhere. In her ethnographic online study, Shana Aoyama found that the social networking site Hi5 is taken up in Peru by young people of Japanese heritage as an avenue for identity exploration. She found group confirmation based on the performance of Nikkei-ness, as well as expressions of individuality. She writes, “instead of heading in one specific direction, the Internet use of Nikkei creates a starburst shape of identity construction and negotiation” (119). Mocro-ness and Nikkei-ness are common collective identification markers that are not just straightforward nationalisms. They refer back to different homelands, while simultaneously they also clearly mark one’s situation of being routed outside of this homeland. Mocro stems from postcolonial migratory flows from the Global South to the West. Nikkei-ness relates to the interesting case of the Japanese diaspora, which is little accounted for, although there are many Japanese communities present in North and South America from before the Second World War. The context of Peru is revealing, as it was the first South American country to accept Japanese migrants. It now hosts the second largest South American Japanese diaspora after Brazil (Lama), and Peru’s former president, Alberto Fujimoro, is also of Japanese origin. We can see how the importance of the nation-state gets blurred as diasporic youth, through cultural hybridisation of youth culture and ethnic ties, initiates subcultures and offers resistance to mainstream western cultural forms. Digital spaces are used to exert youthful diaspora branding. Networked branding includes expressing cultural identities that are communal and individual but also both local and global, illustrative of how “by virtue of being global the Internet can gift people back their sense of themselves as special and particular” (Miller and Slater 115). In the next section, we set out how youthful diaspora branding is part of a larger, more rhizomatic formation of multivocal hypertext aesthetics. Hypertext Aesthetics In this section, we set out how an in-between, or “liminal”, position, in postcolonial theory terms, can be a source of differential and multivocal cultural production. Appadurai, Bhabha, and Gilroy recognise that liminal positions increasingly leave their mark on the global and local flows of cultural objects, such as food, cinema, music, and fashion. Here, our focus is on how migrant youths turn to hypertextual forms of cultural production for a differential expression of digital diasporas. Hypertexts are textual fields made up of hyperlinks. Odin states that travelling through cyberspace by clicking and forging hypertext links is a form of multivocal digital diaspora aesthetics: The perpetual negotiation of difference that the border subject engages in creates a new space that demands its own aesthetic. This new aesthetic, which I term “hypertext” or “postcolonial,” represents the need to switch from the linear, univocal, closed, authoritative aesthetic involving passive encounters characterising the performance of the same to that of non-linear, multivocal, open, non-hierarchical aesthetic involving active encounters that are marked by repetition of the same with and in difference. (Cited in Landow 356-7) On their profile pages, migrant youth digitally author themselves in distinct ways by linking up to various sites. They craft their personal hypertext. These hypertexts display multivocal diaspora aesthetics which are personal and specific; they display personal intersections of affiliations that are not easily generalisable. In several Dutch-language online spaces, subjects from Dutch-Moroccan backgrounds have taken up the label Mocro as an identity marker. Across social networking sites such as Hyves and Facebook, the term gets included in nicknames and community pages. Think of nicknames such as “My own Mocro styly”, “Mocro-licious”, “Mocro-chick”. The term Mocro itself is often already multilayered, as it is often combined with age, gender, sexual preference, religion, sport, music, and generationally specific cultural affiliations. Furthermore, youths connect to a variety of groups ranging from feminist interests (“Women in Charge”), Dutch nationalism (“I Love Holland”), ethnic affiliations (“The Moroccan Kitchen”) to clothing (the brand H&M), and global junk food (McDonalds). These diverse affiliations—that are advertised online simultaneously—add nuance to the typical, one-dimensional stereotype about migrant youth, integration, and Islam in the context of Europe and Netherlands (Leurs, forthcoming). On the online social networking site Hi5, Nikkei youths in Peru, just like any other teenagers, express their individuality by decorating their personal profile page with texts, audio, photos, and videos. Besides personal information such as age, gender, and school information, Aoyama found that “a starburst” of diverse affiliations is published, including those that signal Japanese-ness such as the Hello Kitty brand, anime videos, Kanji writing, kimonos, and celebrities. Also Nikkei hyperlink to elements that can be identified as “Latino” and “Chino” (Chinese) (104-10). Furthermore, users can show their multiple affiliations by joining different “groups” (after which a hyperlink to the group community appears on the profile page). Aoyama writes “these groups stretch across a large and varied scope of topics, including that of national, racial/ethnic, and cultural identities” (2). These examples illustrate how digital diasporas encompass personalised multivocal hypertexts. With the widely accepted adagio “you are what you link” (Adamic and Adar), hypertextual webs can be understood as productions that reveal how diasporic youths choose to express themselves as individuals through complex sets of non-homogeneous identifications. Migrant youth connects to ethnic origin and global networks in eclectic and creative ways. The concept of “digital diaspora” therefore encapsulates both material and virtual (dis)connections that are identifiable through common traits, strategies, and aesthetics. Yet these hypertextual connections are also highly personalised and unique, offering a testimony to the fluid negotiations and intersections between the local and the global, the rooted and the diasporic. Conclusions In this article, we have argued that migrant youths render digital diasporas more complex by including branding and hypertextual aesthetics in transnational public spheres. Digital diasporas may no longer be understood simply in terms of their vertical relations to a homeland or place of origin or as horizontally connected to a clearly marked transnational community; rather, they must also be seen as engaging in rhizomatic digital practices, which reshuffle traditional understandings of origin and belonging. Contemporary youthful digital diasporas are therefore far more complex in their engagement with digital media than most existing theory allows: connections are hybridised, and affiliations are turned into practices of diasporic branding and becoming. There is a generational specificity to multivocal diaspora aesthetics; this specificity lies in the ways migrant youths show communal recognition and express their individuality through hypertext which combines affiliation to their national/ethnic “roots” with an embrace of other youth subcultures, many of them transnational. These two axes are constantly reshuffled and renegotiated online where, thanks to the technological possibilities of HTML hypertext, a whole range of identities and identifications may be brought together at any given time. We trust that these insights will be of interest in future discussion of online networks, transnational communities, identity formation, and hypertext aesthetics where much urgent and topical work remains to be done. References Adamic, Lada A., and Eytan Adar. “You Are What You Link.” 2001 Tenth International World Wide Web Conference, Hong Kong. 26 Apr. 2010. ‹http://www10.org/program/society/yawyl/YouAreWhatYouLink.htm›. Ali B. “Leipe Mocro Flavour.” ALIB.NL / SPEC Entertainment. 2007. 4 Oct. 2010 ‹http://www3.alib.nl/popupAlibtv.php?catId=42&contentId=544›. Alonso, Andoni, and Pedro J. Oiarzabal. Diasporas in the New Media Age. Reno: U of Nevada P, 2010. Anderson, Benedict. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. Rev. ed. London: Verso, 2006 (1983). Aoyama, Shana. Nikkei-Ness: A Cyber-Ethnographic Exploration of Identity among the Japanese Peruvians of Peru. Unpublished MA thesis. South Hadley: Mount Holyoke, 2007. 1 Feb. 2010 ‹http://hdl.handle.net/10166/736›. Appadurai, Arjun. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. New York: Routledge, 1994. Brah, Avtar. Cartographies of Diaspora: Contesting Identities. London: Routledge, 1996. Brinkerhoff, Jennifer M. Digital Diasporas: Identity and Transnational Engagement. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009. Cohen, Robin. Global Diasporas: An Introduction. London: U College London P, 1997. Everett, Anna. Digital Diaspora: A Race for Cyberspace. Albany: SUNY, 2009. Fernández, María. “Postcolonial Media Theory.” Art Journal 58.3 (1999): 58-73. Georgiou, Myria. Diaspora, Identity and the Media: Diasporic Transnationalism and Mediated Spatialities. Creskill: Hampton Press, 2006. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso, 1993. Gower, Eric. “When the Virtual Becomes the Real: A Talk with Benedict Anderson.” NIRA Review, 1996. 19 Apr. 2010 ‹http://www.nira.or.jp/past/publ/review/96spring/intervi.html›. Haraway, Donna. Modest Witness@Second Millennium. FemaleMan Meets OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Ito, Mizuko, et al. Hanging Out, Messing Out, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010. Japanese American National Museum. “Discover Nikkei: Japanese Migrants and Their Descendants.” Discover Nikkei, 2005. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://www.discovernikkei.org/en/›. Lama, Abraham. “Home Is Where the Heartbreak Is for Japanese-Peruvians.” Asia Times 16 Oct. 1999. 6 May 2010 ‹http://www.atimes.com/japan-econ/AJ16Dh01.html›. Landow, George P. Hypertext 3.0. Critical Theory and New Media in an Era of Globalization. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 2006. Leurs, Koen. Identity, Migration and Digital Media. Utrecht: Utrecht University. PhD Thesis, forthcoming. Miller, Daniel, and Don Slater. The Internet: An Etnographic Approach. Oxford: Berg, 2000. Mo. “Marokkanen met Brainz.” Hyves, 23 Feb. 2008. 4 Oct. 2010. ‹http://marokkaansehersens.hyves.nl/›. Odin, Jaishree K. “The Edge of Difference: Negotiations between the Hypertextual and the Postcolonial.” Modern Fiction Studies 43.3 (1997): 598-630. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Narratives @ Home Pages: The Future as Virtually Located.” Colonies – Missions – Cultures in the English-Speaking World. Ed. Gerhard Stilz. Tübingen: Stauffenburg, 2001. 396–406. Ponzanesi, Sandra. “Diasporic Subjects and Migration.” Thinking Differently: A Reader in European Women's Studies. Ed. Gabrielle Griffin and Rosi Braidotti. London: Zed Books, 2002. 205–20. Safran, William. “Diasporas in Modern Societies: Myths of Homeland and Return.” Diaspora 1.1 (1991): 83-99. Schäfer, Mirko T. Bastard Culture! How User Participation Transforms Cultural Production. Amsterdam: Amsterdam UP, 2011. Van Doorn, Niels, and Liesbeth van Zoonen. “Theorizing Gender and the Internet: Past, Present, and Future.” Routledge Handbook of Internet Politics. Ed. Andrew Chadwick and Philip N. Howard. London: Routledge. 261-74.

The purpose of this study was to determine behavioral risk factor prevalence at Lands' End, Incorporated, and to prioritize these risk factors for health promotion program intervention. A randomly-selected stratified sample of employees from three employee classifications were invited to participate in the study anonymously. Of the 493 subjects selected, 333 (67.5%) completed the Centers for Disease Control's Behavioral Risk Factor Survey. Population Descriptive Statistics were used to determine prevalence estimates for nine risk factors. Sedentary lifestyle was found to be the most prevalent risk factor (47.4%), followed by obesity (29.4%), acute drinking (26.4%), and lack of safety belt use (22.0%).The Hanlon Method, a process to prioritize health interventions, was used to determine risk factor intervention priorities. This method combines four components; size of the problem, seriousness of the problem, solubility, and pertinent organizational factors, into an Overall Priority Rating formula. Sedentary lifestyle received the highest priority rating, followed by obesity, safety belt use, and smoking.
Institute for Wellness

Abstract The book of Ezekiel makes rhetorical use of the human body to construct an exile-centred Judean identity. This focus on the body is inextricable from Ezekiel’s setting in the sixth-century BCE Judean exile to Babylonia. In such a context of upheaval, all the displaced group reliably retains are their bodies. Even so, the material surroundings of those bodies change completely, calling previously accepted ways of being into question. The book of Ezekiel reveals acute awareness of this situation, evoking bodily practices and embodied experiences that serve to construct a Judean identity based on existence outside of the land of Judah. This identity excludes both non-Judeans and the Judeans who remained in Judah. The book of Ezekiel seeks to achieve this exclusion via descriptions of bodily practices—including circumcision, dress, and the observance of a cultic calendar—that distinguish its constructed in-group of exiled Judeans from outsiders. Ezekiel also evokes the embodied emotion of disgust regarding the bodies of those with “outsider” practices, which in turn encourages the practice of segregation and endogamy within the in-group. Focusing on the bodies in the book of Ezekiel also highlights how the text presents hierarchies within the exilic Judean group, which itself contains bodies differentiated by gender and priestly or nonpriestly descent. Reading the text in this way reveals how the book of Ezekiel constructs a model of a variegated community able to embody a Judean identity that not only survived but also was based on life outside of the land of Judah.

The presented volume considers sources from the so-called Taken Lands – former Polish lands incorporated into the Russian Empire – as well as from the area of the Duchy of Warsaw and then Kingdom of Poland. Its chronological scope encompasses the 19th and early 20th centuries, and its subject-matter stretches from homilies, to legal and bureaucratic sources, to those concerning the history of science and technology. The authors touch upon a number of themes relating to the technicalities, methodology and theory of source editing.

In July 1269, King Louis IX of France was planning a campaign in Egypt or the Holy Land. One year later, his fleet landed on Sardinia, and in a war council held on July 13 Louis declared Tunis the target of the crusade. What happened between July 1269 and July 1270 to send the expedition in this unexpected direction is shrouded in secrecy. By expanding the narrative to incorporate Mediterranean‐wide networks of interaction, this chapter identifies several key turning points: the visit of the Dominican linguist Ramon Martí to Tunis in 1269; the attendance of Tunisian envoys at the baptismal ceremony of a French Jew at Saint‐Denis in October; the arrival of a Mongol embassy in Paris toward the end of the year; and the dispatch of an Angevin envoy to Tunis the following April, a month after Louis had lifted the oriflamme at Saint Denis to launch the campaign.

The concept of “land community” (or “biotic community”) that features centrally in Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic has typically been equated with the concept of “ecosystem.” The author argues that we need to rethink Leopold’s concept of land community. First, Leopold’s views are not identical to those of his contemporaries, although they resemble those of some subsequent ecologists. Second, the land community concept does not map cleanly onto the concept of “ecosystem”; it also incorporates elements of the “community” concept in community ecology. Third, the question of whether land communities have boundaries can be addressed by an analysis of land communities as individuals. There are challenges to be worked out, but the author argues that these challenges can be resolved. The result is a defensible land community concept that is ontologically robust enough to be a locus of moral obligation while being consistent with contemporary ecological theory and practice.

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This text incorporates a unique approach to land law which helps students understand how rules work in isolation as well as how they interlink. This approach provides the tools to accomplish high-level analysis quickly. Significant cases are emphasized here and are used to illustrate rules. Topics covered include: an introduction to what land law is, human rights, personal and property rights, and registered title. Chapters also look at the acquisition of equitable interests, trusts of land, leases, mortgages, security interest in land, easements, freehold covenants, and the defences question. Finally, the text ends with an overview of concepts and contexts.

Titles in the Core Text series take the reader straight to the heart of the subject, providing focused, concise, and reliable guides for students at all levels. This text incorporates a unique approach to land law which helps students understand how rules work in isolation as well as how they interlink. This approach provides the tools to accomplish high-level analysis quickly. Significant cases are emphasized here and are used to illustrate rules. Topics covered include: an introduction to what land law is, human rights, personal and property rights, and registered title. Chapters also look at the acquisition of equitable interests, trusts of land, leases, mortgages, security interest in land, easements, freehold covenants, and the defences question. Finally, the text ends with an overview of concepts and contexts.

From the Pueblo land protests of the 1920s to the sports teams' mascot controversies of the 1990s, this book chronicles the depictions of Native Americans in the press. Weston shows how some images of Indians that date from the time of Columbus have persisted into the present, and she asks whether journalistic practices have helped or hindered accurate portrayals of Native Americans. Few books of this kind have given attention to both local and national press, or have dealt so extensively with the 20th century. Weston has incorporated a wealth of well-chosen examples, presenting an accessible account of this fascinating subject.

Guidelines for Surveying Soil and Land Resources promotes the development and implementation of consistent methods and standards for conducting soil and land resource surveys in Australia. These surveys are primarily field operations that aim to identify, describe, map and evaluate the various kinds of soil or land resources in specific areas. The advent of geographic information systems, global positioning systems, airborne gamma radiometric remote sensing, digital terrain analysis, simulation modelling, efficient statistical analysis and internet-based delivery of information has dramatically changed the scene in the past two decades. As successor to the Australian Soil and Land Survey Handbook: Guidelines for Conducting Surveys, this authoritative guide incorporates these new methods and techniques for supporting natural resource management. Soil and land resource surveyors, engineering and environmental consultants, commissioners of surveys and funding agencies will benefit from the practical information provided on how best to use the new technologies that have been developed, as will professionals in the spatial sciences such as geomorphology, ecology and hydrology.

A sole trader or partnership may decide, for a variety of reasons, to incorporate the business. Incorporation will give rise to a number of tax and other problems. This chapter considers these problems and how they can be avoided, or at least mitigated. It shows that the tax rules are the most important in this area, since if they are not appreciated the payment of an unexpected tax bill can cause very serious cash flow problems. These include rules on income tax, capital gains tax, VAT, and stamp duty/stamp duty land tax.

Abstract One of the key issues raised in The Da Vinci Code involves the role of the feminine in Christianity. According to both Leigh Teaming and Robert Langdon, the secret society known as the Priory of Sino has rightly understood that Christianity was originally a religion that celebrated the feminine—both the feminine human and the feminine divine—and incorporated practices into its worship that gave witness to this celebration.

This chapter analyses how Ezekiel Landau appropriates Cordoverian expressions, motifs, and ideals aside from availing zoharic teachings in all his works. It explains the central mystical goal of devekut that is promoted in both ecstatic and Cordoverian writings, which claims that nothing less than the structure of the universe, the purpose of human activity, reward and punishment, and the nature of the next world can relate to this state. It also mentions how Landau frequently advocates the ideal of devekut and related mystical concepts in terms borrowed from Maimonides' philosophical and legal works. The chapter considers ideas that bear a striking similarity to elements of ecstatic and Cordoverian Kabbalah, in which Landau promotes the ideal of devekut. It discusses the presence of the goal of devekut that are regularly incorporated into Cordoverian works.

The influence of anti-braking system on the shimmy region and oscillation characteristics of the nose landing gear is studied. The moment generated by the braking system is modeled as a function of the adhesion coefficient and the torsional oscillation speed, and it is incorporated into the landing gear oscillation non-linear dynamic model. The results of analysis show that the braking frequency is increased by 50%, the area of the lateral dominant shimmy region is increased by 6.9%, the area of the torsional dominant shimmy region is reduced by 18.8%, and the amplitude of the torsional oscillation is suppressed. The braking amplitude is increased by 22%, the area of lateral dominant shimmy region is decreased by 3.1%, and the area of torsional dominant shimmy region is increased by 15.5%.

This chapter reviews the concepts originating in Sefer yetsirah or Book of Creation that are found in several of Ezekiel Landau's writings, including zoharic motifs that repeatedly appear in his Prague works. It considers Sefer yetsirah as the first systematic Hebrew mystical treatise and oldest mystical text used by Landau. It also explores other writings by Landau that appropriate theosophical-theurgical notions emphasized in the Zohar. The chapter details Landau's Prague writings that are replete with citations from the Zohar, such as the depiction of the sefirotic realm's three major aspects: the right, left, and centre. It mentions the research of the art historian Thomas Hubka, which showed that major zoharic motifs were incorporated into the architectural design and interior decorations of numerous seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Polish synagogues.

What is it? The Linguistic Landscape (LL) is a relatively new field which draws from several disciplines such as applied linguistics, sociolinguistics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, and cultural geography. According to Landry and Bourhis (1997), “the language of public road signs, advertising billboards, street names, place names, commercial shop signs, and public signs on government buildings combines to form the linguistic landscape of a given territory, region, or urban agglomeration” (p. 25). More recently, the type of signs that can be found in the public space has broadened to include the language on T-shirts, stamp machines, football banners, postcards, menus, products, tattoos, and graffiti. Despite this wider variety of signs, Landry and Bourhis’s (1997) definition still captures the essence of the LL, which is multimodal (signs combine visual, written, and sometimes audible data) and can also incorporate the use of multiple languages (multilingual).

Chapter Five presents the voices of four U.S. Muslim women who actively incorporate social justice practices into their engagements with Islam: Sister Aisha Al-Adawiya, Asifa Quraishi-Landes, Laila Al-Marayati, and Hazel Gomez. Each woman articulates clear relationships with gender justice and feminism in their lives. The chapter explores how their work and perspectives refract the racial and gendered legacies of U.S. Muslim women across the last century. It introduces the concept of Muslim feminism to link their experiences across racial, ethnic, and generational boundaries.

This chapter considers the relationship between land law and human rights. From a distinctly land law perspective, the human rights discourse has given rise to much debate, which continues to fuel much academic commentary. The chapter focuses on the key European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) rights incorporated into domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA 1998) — namely, Art. 1 of the First Protocol to the ECHR and Art. 8 of the ECHR. It identifies other Convention rights which exert an influence on land law. It begins with a brief summary of the broader machinery of the HRA 1998.

This chapter explores the development of international law on indigeneity. It reviews the legal protections endowed by key documents, such as International Labor Organizations Convention No. 169 and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The chapter also provides a short comparative legal perspective on land rights of indigenous peoples which helps to situate the Israeli case within other settler colonial situations and to address the status of the relevant international legislation and norms. It concludes that several components of the UNDRIP have gained a status of international customary law, and hence with growing relevance to Israeli jurisprudence and to the Bedouins. The chapter ends by addressing the question of indigenous peoples’ rights in Israeli law and how Israeli basic laws should expand to incorporate the legal protection of the Bedouins.

This chapter explores mimicry as a planning practice central to the development and occupation of what is rapidly becoming the most popular neighborhood form in Delhi, and indeed much of metropolitan India — the unauthorized colony. The chapter describes “unauthorized colonies” as the peripheral neighborhoods located outside the city's master-planned areas that have long been denied state services. As the population and electoral influence of unauthorized colonies have grown, the planning authorities have introduced rules for regularizing these areas, which allows them to be retroactively incorporated into the plan and subsequently supplied with state water, sewerage, and related services. The chapter then shifts to present the three planning spaces — the town planning, water infrastructure, and the unauthorized building — which shows how practices of mimicry build material planned-ness into the core of supposedly unplanned spaces.

This chapter explores the impact of human rights upon property rights and relations, with particular emphasis on Article 1 Protocol 1 and Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights which has been incorporated into English domestic law by the Human Rights Act 1998. It first provides a background on the particular jurisprudence of human rights reasoning before discussing the import of Article 1 Protocol 1, in protecting possessions, and Article 8, in requiring respect for the home. The focus is on home repossession (Article 8), protection against discrimination (Article 14), and right to a fair trial (Article 6). It also considers adjudication under the Human Rights Act 1998, along with the justification formula developed by the Strasbourg Court and how it operates in the context of the particular human rights that relate to land. Finally, it examines the so-called vertical effect and horizontal effect.

This paper describes a comprehensive model of Elastohydrodynamic piston lubrication, incorporated the crown lands into solution domain to characterize the effect of crown-liner interactions on piston motion. Elastohydrodynamic Lubrication (EHL) analysis of a piston skirt-liner conjunction is in general a useful methodology for design analysis of pistons. The diameters of piston crown lands are much less than those of skirt and liner for typical piston designs. Therefore crown lands normally do not interact with liner under usual operating conditions and hence most of the researchers exclude crown lands from the EHL analysis and mainly focus on piston skirt. However, under some of the engine operating conditions piston crown lands play important role in the secondary dynamics and tribology aspects of pistons. During the thermodynamic cycle when piston is hot and cylinder liner is relatively colder, piston thermal expansion leads to crown-liner interaction, which necessitates EHL, asperity contact and wear considerations of piston crown along with piston skirt. The simulation methodology for piston EHL analysis uses a mass-conserving algorithm for the finite volume method solution of Reynolds equation, which is coupled to elasticity relations and Greenwood-Tripp asperity contact model. Elrod’s mass conserving algorithm enables to model and analyze partially lubricated piston-liner interface by the input of oil supply and moreover rigorously handles cavitated zones, and takes into account piston ring grooves, piston cut-outs and unlubricated areas due to piston geometry. Results are presented from parametric studies that show comparisons between the analyses of the models with piston skirt lubrication only and piston lubrication, which incorporates the crown lands to the EHL domain.

The humid air turbine (HAT) cycle is a novel advanced gas turbine cycle. However, the conventional HAT cycle has many insufficiencies considering combined heat and power generation, water recovery and exhausts emission with low temperature. This study deals with these problems by integrating absorption heat pumps into the HAT cycle. Six types of absorption heat pumps, including the single stage open cycle absorption heat transformer (connect to the HAT cycle with simple and complex manner respectively), the two stage open cycle absorption heat transformer, the open cycle absorption heat pump with the single pressure, the closed cycle two stage absorption heat transformer and the closed cycle absorption heat pump, are incorporated into the HAT cycle. The integrated systems are simulated. The results indicate that while the electrical efficiency of the original HAT cycle is 56.48%, the cycle efficiencies of the above-mentioned integrated cycles are 50.53%, 55.15%, 51.07%, 46.88%, 57.52% and 46.25%, respectively. Water recovery can be achieved in each integrated system although the recovery effects are quite different. For the open systems, the water recovery levels depend on the pressure difference of the gas and the water. Full water recovery can be realized and the temperature of the exhaust gas can be kept high. The water recovery levels of the closed systems relate to the thermal capacity of the exhaust gas, and the emission of the low temperature exhaust gas is difficult. From the point of view of the combined heat and power generation, the temperature of the exhaust gas does not influence the quantity of the heat supply. Three integrated systems can be applied for the combined heat and power generation, the heat and power efficiency are 62.85%, 76.77% and 63.83% respectively. In general, the advantages of the HAT cycle combined with the absorption heat pump system are verified in the present paper.

Abstract An important part of the design of airplane brakes is the laboratory verification of their capability to absorb the kinetic energy of the airplane under various operating conditions ranging from normal service energy levels to the very high energy of a rejected takeoff (RTO). These “stops”, as dynamometer brake applications are called, must demonstrate acceptable temperature levels for the wheel and tire, the ability of the brake to carry out numerous taxi and service type stops without any servicing, and acceptable wear rates for the friction material so as to make the brake economically feasible for use by the airlines. These laboratory tests are typically carried out on an adjustable inertia roadwheel dynamometer. The wheel and tire are “landed” against the flywheel of the dynamometer until the correct radial load is developed on the tire. The brakes are then applied to decelerate the dynamometer to a low taxi speed or stop it completely. With such a system various spectrums of landing and multiple taxi stops can be programmed to yield a simulation of actual airplane operation. An attempt has been made to extend this type of dynamometer testing to examine the vibrational characteristics of the brake as part of the total landing gear system, in addition to its performance as an energy absorber. Since these total-system vibrations can be destructive to both the brake and the landing gear structure, this type of vibrational evaluation is as important as the energy evaluation of the brake. For many transport aircraft, particularly those with four or more wheels per landing gear, it is impossible to incorporate the entire landing gear into the dynamometer testing. The nature of the testing extension has therefore been to simulate the behavior of the gear with simpler devices called simulators. In order to duplicate as nearly as possible the vibrational characteristics that will be experienced on the airplane, various types of landing gear simulators have been used in conjunction with dynamometer testing. This paper discusses the pros and cons of landing gear simulators and a proposed approach that would utilize the simulator in a program to more accurately predict actual airplane landing gear vibrational characteristics.

When in-flight failures occur, rapid and precise decision-making under imprecise information is required in order to regain and maintain control of the aircraft. To achieve planned aircraft trajectory and complete landing safely, the uncertainties in vehicle parameters of the damaged aircraft need to be learned and incorporated at the level of motion planning. Uncertainty is a very important concern in recovery of damaged aircraft since it can cause false diagnosis and prognosis that may lead to further performance degradation and mission failure. The mathematical and statistical approaches to analyzing uncertainty are first presented. The damaged aircraft is simulated via a simplified kinematics model. The different sources and perspectives of uncertainties under a damage assessment process and post-failure trajectory planning are presented and classified. The decision-making process for an emergency motion planning to landing site is developed via the Dempster-Shafer evidence theory. The objective of the trajectory planning is to arrive at a target position while maximizing the safety of the aircraft under uncertain conditions. Simulations are presented for an emergency motion planning and landing that takes into account aircraft dynamics, path complexity, distance to landing site, runway characteristics, and subjective human decision.

Four Textron Lycoming TF40B marine gas turbine engines are used to power the U.S. Navy’s Landing Craft Air Cushion (LCAC) vehicle. This is the first hovercraft of this configuration to be put in service for the Navy. Operation and test of the first production craft revealed deficiencies and less than desirable reliability, but confirmed the validity of its design and ability to perform the mission. After intensive efforts to resolve these problems, reliability trends began to improve as a result of corrective actions incorporated. Today, the LCAC fleet has accrued over 50,000 engine operating hours. Presented here are the changes which have been incorporated into the configuration of the TF40B engine to eliminate both engine unique and vehicle related discrepancies revealed through fleet experience. These changes have contributed significantly toward the improvement of the engine’s mean time between removal (MTBR) and mean time between failure (MTBF) rates.

The Hot End Technologies Directorate (HETD) of Gas Turbine Research Establishment (GTRE) has the mandate to design, development and delivery of airworthy combustor and afterburner modules for a military aero gas turbine engine. In order to meet the mandate, the directorate takes the overall responsibility of design to manufacture of the combustion systems. This paper addresses the challenges faced in the development of combustor module. A short annular combustor with air blast atomizer is incorporated in the engine and it is a very important equipment of a gas turbine engine, wherein the heat energy is added to get Turbine Inlet Temperature (TET). It comprises of a pre-diffuser, a dump diffuser, outer annulus, inner annulus and a flame tube. There has been a basic liner, which was used in earlier engines and there was a shortfall in terms of performance parameters — allowable profile and pattern factors. To improve the performance, in collaboration with the M/s Central Institute of Aviation Motors (CIAM), Moscow, Russia, the liner was redesigned [1]. The secondary holes were totally blocked, primary and dilution holes were altered and it was incorporated with a new dome with a modified curvature. A new air blast atomizer with a swirler having an outer and inner pintle was incorporated. The basic liner was incorporated with these modifications and making this dome out of the high temperature resistance nickel chromium alloy was challenging and it was realized. The liner assemblies incorporating all the welding details have been realized within the GTRE. The combustor system was tested for ground light up to 4.3 km. The light up time was of the order of 5 s. The pressure loss was of the order of 4.9% at a combustor inlet Mn of 0.30. The circumferential and radial pattern factor for the modified liner is of 0.36 and 0.14 respectively.

The US Navy Landing Craft, Air Cushion (LCAC) engines, like all marine gas turbines, use water washes to preserve performance and increase reliability by removing salt and other contaminants from the compressor. Due to the severity of the operating environment and unfavorable operations base, water washing can pose risks to the LCAC engines. Galvanic corrosion, crevice corrosion, insufficient contaminant removal and incompatibility among seal materials, contaminants and wash solvents can outweigh the benefits of water wash. The US Navy has incorporated water wash procedures and materials such as silicon rubber seals and glass fiber and Teflon bushings to mitigate these risks.

This paper describes a fuel and air mixer being developed for an 11 MW gas turbine catalytic combustion system. The fuel is natural gas. The mixer is based loosely on the radial-swirler design used in the XONON™-2.0 combustor, but has an axial swirler and inlet. Features have been incorporated in the design to make it resistant to flameholding. A combination of atmospheric testing and advanced CFD analysis have resulted in a design that is close to meeting its design targets of +/− 5% fuel to air uniformity, +/− 10°C thermal uniformity and 0.5% pressure loss. Modal and thermal stress finite element analyses have been incorporated in the development from its beginning phases to assure that the final design will meet life targets. This mixer is one of two alternative designs being considered for the production version of the catalytic combustion system.

Abstract The Tom Boy field is one of the oldest fields in the Niger Delta Basin with more than 30 wells at the time of initiating infill development drilling campaign. The drilling campaign of 11 wells (10 producers and 1 Water Source) was planned to develop reservoirs that have not been produced and to optimize production from developed reservoirs. Numerous challenges were faced in the planning and execution phases for the infill drilling. Key uncertainties include, Structure, Stratigraphy, wellbore placement issues, current fluid saturation/contacts in the reservoirs, and wellbore instability issues as wells drilled through pressure-depleted reservoirs. Thus, this paper addressed how these uncertainties were managed during planning and execution of the drilling program. Through integration of detailed Uncertainty Management Plan (UMP) during execution, the team eliminated the need for drilling pilot well in an instance; and in another scenario, successfully landed a horizontal well in a 10ft thick sand. The methodology used include deployment of improved technologies, proper planning, appropriate mud-weight design, history matched reservoir models, optimizing subsurface target locations for data acquisition and proper well sequencing on the drilling schedule was used to understand the current saturation in some target reservoirs and target the sweet spot in the reservoir. Pre-execution decision tree assisted with making quick real time decisions while drilling the landing and lateral hole sections based on the outcome of each uncertainty identified in the UMP signpost. Decision tree incorporated all information (earth model, seismic data, dips, local pre-drill model etc.) integrated with potential outcomes from real-time reservoir navigation data obtained from geosteering tools to aid well placement in an optimal position within clean sand. All wells were successfully drilled and completed in the sweet spot of target reservoirs to meet pre-drill production targets.

Understanding the challenges of achieving environmental sustainability goals given future demand for food, fiber and fuel requires economic models and databases that incorporate spatially explicit information on land use and land cover (LULC). The GTAP LULC database and its variants have been extensively used in a wide variety of applications aimed at examining the land-environment-energy nexus. Looking back the development of the first GTAP LULC was no simple task as it required the expertise of several researchers to identify and process relevant geospatial information. And because of this, succeeding updates of the GTAP LULC database (namely v.7 for 2004 and v.8 for 2004, 2007) relied heavily on AEZ-region level data from GTAP LULCv.6 in order to update land cover and land use as well as share-out land rents. This memorandum documents the development of the GTAP LULC v.9 database. In keeping with the multi-year release of GTAP v.9, the GTAP LULC v.9 data is developed for each benchmark year (i.e. 2004, 2007 and 2011). But unlike previous releases, GTAP LULCv.9 is created directly from publicly available high-resolution (i.e. 5-minute grid) spatial land cover and land use maps. Since these maps can be readily downloaded online, it is possible to replicate GTAP LULCv.9 if users know how to handle spatial data and if they follow the methods outlined in this document. Furthermore, by developing the capacity to handle spatial data within the Center, new spatial LULC information can be easily incorporated in future releases of the GTAP LULC.

The goal of the work described herein is to provide PRCI and the pipeline industry further understanding of the current capabilities and limitations of combined SAR and high resolution optical satellite imagery for the monitoring of pipeline ROWs which span river crossings. Four Areas of Interests (AOIs) with pipeline ROWs that span river crossings were selected for analysis: South Saskatchewan River, Saskatchewan, Canada operated by SaskEnergy Incorporated; Thompson Creek, Louisiana, USA operated by Colonial Pipeline Company; Gila River, Arizona, USA operated by Kinder Morgan Incorporated; and Humber Estuary, UK, operated by National Grid. For each AOI, monitoring requirements were defined by the operators. Amplitude Change Detection (ACD) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) were performed for all AOIs; results correlated to the defined monitoring requirements are discussed. A high level summary of the role of combined SAR and optical satellite operational monitoring of pipeline river crossings is listed below: - InSAR "Phase" used for (a) Subsidence (b) Slope Movement - SAR "Amplitude" used to both detect and classify (a) large scale Land Cover/Land Use Change (e.g. bridge construction), (b) flooding, (c) river channel changes, (d) river bed exposure, and (e) vessel traffic. - SAR "Amplitude" used to detect changes resulting from (a) small scale Land Cover/ Land Use (e.g. construction of individual buildings), and possibly (b) bank erosion and (c) pipeline exposure. Optical Satellite imagery is required for classification of these changes.

The Forestry and Agriculture Sector Optimization Model with Greenhouse Gases (FASOMGHG) has historically relied on regional average costs of land conversion to simulate land use change across cropland, pasture, rangeland, and forestry. This assumption limits the accuracy of the land conversion estimates by not recognizing spatial heterogeneity in land quality and conversion costs. Using data from Nielsen et al. (2014), we obtained the afforestation cost per county, then estimated nonparametric regional marginal cost functions for land converting land to forestry. These afforestation costs were then incorporated into FASOMGHG. Three different assumptions for land moving into the forest sector were run; constant average conversion cost, static rising marginal costs and dynamic rising marginal cost, in order to assess the implications of alternative land conversion cost assumptions on key outcomes, such as projected forest area and cropland use, carbon sequestration, and forest product output.

The land-use augmented version of the GTAP Data Base has been used for a wide variety of applications (Hertel, Rose, & Tol, 2009). The original GTAP-AEZ database incorporated geospatial data on land use into the version 6 GTAP Data Base, with a benchmark year of 2001. The methodology for integrating this information into the GTAP-AEZ framework is documented by Lee et al. (2009). This database has been updated for 2004 using the version 7 GTAP Data Base, national-level crop production data from FAOSTAT and updated time-series data on cropland and pasture cover developed by Navin Ramankutty (2011). For version 7, the original geospatial data on crop production circa 2000 from Monfreda et al. (2008) was used since updates for this data are currently unavailable. This memorandum documents how the land use data has been updated for use in the version 8 data base. In keeping with the multi-year release of v.8, the Land Use Data Base is updated to two base years: 2004 and 2007. This update heavily relies on the methods outlined by Avetisyan, Baldos and Hertel (2010), but there are some changes in sources and procedures, as will become evident in the comparisons of the v.7-2004 and v.8-2004 data bases.

This study analyzes the optimal allocation of the world's land resources over the course of the next century in the dynamic forward-looking framework, which brings together distinct strands of economic, agronomic, and biophysical literature and incorporates key drivers affecting global landuse. We show that, while some deforestation is optimal in the near term, the desirability of further deforestation is elimated by mid-century under the baseline scenario. While the adverse productivity shocks from climate change have a modest effect on global land use, when combined with high growth in energy prices they lead to significant deforestation and higher GHG emissions than in the baseline. Imposition of GHG emissions constraint further heightens the competition for land, as fertilizer use declines and land-based mitigation strategies expand. However, the effectiveness of such a pre-announced constraint is completely diluted by intertemporal substitution of deforestation which accelerates prior to imposition of the target.

During 2014–2015, a team of researchers conducted a series of primary and secondary studies on land record modernisation initiatives across Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Bihar and Gujarat, which were published as part of a five-volume set on Land Records Modernisation in India. The second edition of these volumes incorporates new initiatives, technological updates and legislative amendments in each of these states, as well as the changes in the national level policy and programmes. Based on extensive on-ground research, this set of volumes presents a review of the land records management processes and the status of current efforts to modernise land records, against a larger historical background of land and revenue relations in each state. The volumes on the respective states are accompanied by an institutional, legal and policy review at the national level, which provides a summary of various crucial aspects of land records modernisation in India. It also appraises the impact of the Digital India Land Records Modernization Programme, its gains and limitations, as well as possible steps forward. Combining detailed state-level analysis with a national review, this is a much needed intervention in the study of land records administration and modernisation in India. This set of volumes would be a vital resource for researchers and practitioners alike, as well as for policymakers at both the state and central level.

The land-use augmented version of the GTAP Data Base has been used for a wide variety of applications (T. W. Hertel, Rose, & Tol, 2009). It builds on global land cover and land use data bases documented in Monfreda et al. (2008) and Ramankutty and Foley (1999) as well as global forestry data developed by Sohngen and Tennity (2004). The methodology for integrating this information into the GTAP-AEZ framework is documented by Lee et al. (2009). The underlying land use data were developed with a base year circa 2001 (The sub-national land use data varied in availability and spanned the period 1997-2003). The original GTAP-AEZ data base incorporated this information into the version 6 GTAP Data Base, with a benchmark year of 2001. Subsequently the GTAP Data Base (version 7) has been updated to 2004, and the version 8 data base will be released in 2011 with a base year of 2007. This memorandum documents how the land use data has been updated from 2001 to 2004 for use in the version 7 data base, by time series data on land cover developed by Navin Ramankutty and national production and harvested area data from the FAO. If a new version of the Monfreda et al. data base does not become available by 2011, this same approach could be used to update the land use data to the 2007 benchmark used in GTAP v.8.

The dynamic state of the land surface presents challenges and opportunities for military and civil operations in extreme cold environments. In particular, the effects of snow and frozen ground on Soldier and vehicle mobility are hard to overstate. Current authoritative weather and land models are run at global scales (i.e., dx > 10 km) and are of limited use at the Soldier scale (dx < 100 m). Here, we describe several snow physics upgrades made to the Noah-Multiparameterization (Noah-MP) community land surface model (LSM). These upgrades include a blowing snow overlay to simulate the lateral redistribution of snow by the wind and the addition of new prognostic snow microstructure variables, namely grain size and bond radius. These additions represent major upgrades to the snow component of the Noah-MP LSM because they incorporate processes and methods used in more specialized snow modeling frameworks. These upgrades are demonstrated in idealized and real-world applications. The test simulations were promising and show that the newly added snow physics replicate observed behavior with reasonable accuracy. We hope these upgrades facilitate ongoing and future research on characterizing the effects of the integrated snow and soil land surface in extreme cold environments at the tactical scale.

Understanding the challenges of achieving environmental sustainability goals given future demand for food, fiber and fuel requires economic frameworks that incorporate spatially explicit information on land use and land cover (LULC). The GTAP LULC Data Base and its variants have been extensively used in a wide variety of applications aimed at examining the land-environment-energy nexus (Golub et al., 2012; Hertel et al., 2010; Johnson et al., 2019; Liu et al., 2014; Peña-Lévano et al., 2019; Stevenson et al., 2013; Taheripour et al., 2010; Taheripour & Tyner, 2012). The first release of the GTAP LULC Data Base combines geospatial data on land use and land cover into GTAP 6 Data Base – benchmarked to year 2001 (GTAP LULC v6). The methodology for creating and using this database is well documented (Lee et al., 2009; C. Monfreda et al., 2009; Sohngen et al., 2008). Succeeding updates of the GTAP LULC Data Base (namely v7 and v8 for 2004 and v8 for 2004, 2007) relied on readily available but aggregated GTAP LULC v6, albeit using national-level data from FAOSTAT (2020) (Avetisyan et al., 2010; Baldos & Hertel, 2012). Starting with GTAP 9, LULC was created directly from the latest, high-resolution (i.e. 5-minute) spatial land cover and land use maps in combination with national-level statistics (Baldos, 2017). This memorandum documents the development of the GTAP LULC version10A which is based on the GTAP v10A Data Base for years 2004, 2007, 2011 and 2014 (Aguiar et al., 2019). This update heavily relies on the methodology for creating GTAP LULC v9 which downscales national-level land cover and crop production statistics from FAOSTAT (2020) using publicly available spatial data (see Appendix I).

This technical note was developed by the US Army Engineer Research and Development Center–Environmental Laboratory (ERDC-EL) to provide guidance to the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) on implementing Endangered Species Act* (ESA) Section 7(a)(1) conservation planning, in coordination with the US Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) during coastal engineering projects. USACE expends ~$200–$300 million each year on compliance, conservation, and other activities associated with the ESA (USACE 2022), and these expenditures often exceed those of other federal agencies (for example, US Bureau of Land Management) that have jurisdiction over far greater land holdings than USACE. To streamline the ESA compliance process, lower costs, and generate more positive outcomes for federally listed threatened and endangered species (TES), USACE was directed in June 2015 by the Deputy Commanding General (DCG) for Civil and Emergency Operations to proactively identify and incorporate conservation benefits into all projects when and where opportunities arise, under the authority of Section 7(a)(1) of the ESA (USACE 2015). The DCG identified Section 7(a)(1) conservation planning as a mechanism to efficiently achieve project purposes, create environmental value, and streamline the ESA Section 7(a)(2) consultation process.