Ken Smith

Aboveground fine litterfall and decomposition are critical processes for transferring nutrients from forest biomass to soils, and the conversion of Brazilian terra-firme forest to tree plantations with varied litterfall characteristics has altered soil nitrogen (N) dynamics and stores at the Curuá-Una Forest Reserve, Pará, Brazil. In this study, we investigated the relationship between soil N stores and aboveground litter inputs by measuring fine litterfall, litter N inputs, forest-floor ...

OBJECTIVE: Managing an outbreak of gastroenteritis (GI) on board a cruise ship while minimising disruption to passengers' on board and shore visit activities is difficult. For this reason it is important to understand the complex patterns of transmission in a closed community. We describe the epidemiological investigation of an outbreak of norovirus during an international cruise.

METHODS: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using information from lists routinely maintained by the ...

BACKGROUND: The rapid and accurate diagnosis of all injuries is critical in trauma surgery. Injuries not diagnosed after the secondary survey are not without serious consequences. Therefore, in an effort to decrease this problem a policy was initiated to perform an ongoing serial exam during the entire course of each patient's involvement with the trauma team at Saint Francis Medical Center.

METHODS: Prospective identification and evaluation of patients admitted to a single trauma ...

THE major transforming protein of bovine papillomavirus type 1, á£5 (refs 1–4), is mainly associated with endomembranes5, 6, specifically binding to a cellular protein of relative molecular mass 16,000 (16K) (ref. 7). At the same time as transformation, E5 causes the phosphorylation of tyrosine residues in epidermal and platelet-derived growth factor receptors8, 9. We show here that the 16K protein associated with E5 is the 16K component of vacuolar ATPases. This protein is known to be ...

Nontrivial difference sets in groups of order a power of 2 are part of the family of difference sets called Menon difference sets (or Hadamard), and they have parameters (22d+2, 22d+1±2d, 22d±2d). In the abelian case, the group has a difference set if and only if the exponent of the group is less than or equal to 2d+2. In [14], the authors construct a difference set in a nonabelian group of order 64 and exponent 32. This paper generalizes that result to show that there is a difference ...

Using a mixed methodologies research method involving a survey and qualitative analysis, the article analyses a survey of Russian history secondary teachers on their perceptions of historical narratives in prescribed history textbooks. This recent survey of secondary history teachers represents one of the first international surveys of history teachers conducted across the Russian Federation (RF). The school history textbooks in the RF represent a clear manifestation of changing ...

Single wall carbon nanotubes (SWNT), polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) and water, homogeneous dispersion has been prepared by stirring and sonication. This dispersion was extruded into fiber via gel spinning. The modulus of the PVA/SWNT (3wt%) composite fiber was 40% higher than that of the control PVA gel spun fiber. Fiber structure and properties have been studied. The PVA orientation in the control and the composite fibers were comparable while the composite fiber ...

The evolution of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) virus leads to new variants that warrant timely epidemiological characterization. Here we use the dense genomic surveillance data generated by the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium to reconstruct the dynamics of 71 different lineages in each of 315 English local authorities between September 2020 and June 2021. This analysis reveals a series of subepidemics that peaked in early autumn 2020, followed by a jump ...

Detection of three very-long-period (VLP) volcanic earthquakes beneath Mammoth Mountain emphasizes that magmatic processes continue to be active beneath this young, eastern California volcano. These VLP earthquakes, which occurred in October 1996 and July and August 2000, appear as bell-shaped pulses with durations of one to two minutes on a nearby borehole dilatometer and on the displacement seismogram from a nearby broadband seismometer. They are accompanied by rapid-fire sequences of ...

This chapter focuses on the maintenance of continuous k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) queries on moving points when updates are allowed. Updates change the functions describing the motion of the points, causing pending events to change. Events are processed to keep the query result consistent as points move. It is shown that the cost of maintaining a continuous k-NN query result for moving points represented in this way can be significantly reduced with a modest increase in the number of ...

This paper consists of a literature review addressing changes in research education in Australia and their implications for research supervision. The organising principle for the review is expressed in the question: What scholarly literature can support and educate universities and supervisors to effectively carry out the work of research supervision in the current climate of Australian tertiary education? Two categories of literature are examined: literature on new ways of ...

Research explored methods for “shortening the food links” or developing the “local foodshed” by connecting farmers with food service buyers (for restaurants and institutions) in Colorado. Telephone interviews were used to investigate marketing and purchasing practices. Findings include that price is not a significant factor in purchasing decisions; that food buyers prioritize quality as their top purchasing criterion but are not aware that local farmers can provide higher quality, that ...

OBJECTIVES: This paper investigates the potential for a standardised electronic health record (EHR) designed for conventional medicine also to be used by complementary and alternative medicine.

METHOD: The research was undertaken using anonymised samples of patient records from homoeopathy practices, to investigate if the patient data could be modelled using the forthcoming joint European and International Standard for EHR Communications (ISO/EN 13606). The research deliberately did not ...

Doppler weather radar imaging enabled the rapid recovery of the Sutter's Mill meteorite after a rare 4-kiloton of TNT-equivalent asteroid impact over the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in northern California. The recovered meteorites survived a record high-speed entry of 28.6 kilometers per second from an orbit close to that of Jupiter-family comets (Tisserand's parameter = 2.8 ± 0.3). Sutter's Mill is a regolith breccia composed of CM (Mighei)-type carbonaceous chondrite and highly ...

An investigation of the relationship between impaired control over gambling, coping strategies, and demographic variables was conducted by surveying female poker machine players (N = 163) in their gaming venues. Metropolitan (n = 14) and regional (n = 6) gaming venues in Victoria, Australia participated. Control over gambling was measured using the Impaired Control Over Gambling Scale (Baron & Dickerson, 1994). Coping strategies were measured using (Folkman et al., 1986) adaptation of ...