Top Off Research Articles

Lost child

Lost child

Information Loss in Top to Random Shuffling

A top to random shuffle of a deck of cards is performed by taking the top card off of the deck and replacing it in a randomly chosen position of the deck. We find approximations of the relative entropy of a deck of n cards after m successive top to random shuffles. Initially the relative entropy decays linearly and for larger m it decays geometrically at a rate that alters abruptly at m = n log n. It converges to an explicitly given expression when m = [n log n+cn] for a constant c.

A New Deal Body Politic: Landscape, Labor, and the Civilian Conservation Corps

In late April of 1933, a shirtless and sunburned young man named John Ripley climbed a solitary pine tree atop the Massanutten mountains in George Washington National Forest, ten miles west of Luray, Virginia. After catching his breath on the uppermost branch, which bowed menacingly under his own weight, Ripley took a short-handled ax and with awkward strokes chopped the top off the slender pine. He next attached a rope and pulley to the tip of the tree, shimmied from his perch, and began working his way down the trunk of the thirty-five foot evergreen, hacking off branch after branch until the young tree stood straight and bare. Near the bottom, Ripley wiped his brow before tying the other end of the rope to an American flag. Several colleagues, whose upturned faces, arms, and torsos had also been reddened from working shirtless outdoors for several days in the sun, then pulled on the rope and hoisted Old Glory high above Roosevelt, the first Civilian Conservation Corps [CCC] camp in the nation.' While the conversion of a pine tree into a flagpole by young CCC enrollees may be disconcerting to contemporary environmentalists, it nevertheless hints at a number of important historical changes set in motion by Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Most obvious was the transformation of the natural landscape, in this case a mountaintop pine grove, which the young men in the Corps altered through their work. Such manual labor had other repercussions as well; working out-of-doors in the Massanutten mountains had sunburned the bodies of the CCC boys stationed in George Washington National Forest, many of whom came not from the surrounding countryside but instead from the nation's cities. And finally, hovering above it all literally high overhead, was an American flag where none had flown before. The events at Camp Roosevelt in April of 1933, then, were more than a quirky patriotic act by the country's first CCC enrollees. They suggest as well that from the very outset the Corps was linking landscape, labor, and politics in new ways during the New Deal. Although numerous reporters attending the Camp Roosevelt flag-raising ceremony wrote articles about it for newspapers across the country, scholars have paid

Topping off: a mechanism of first-male sperm precedence in a vertebrate.

Competition among the sperm of rival males is an important evolutionary phenomenon in many organisms. Yet, despite extensive research on sperm competition in some vertebrate taxa, very little progress has been made on this topic in amphibians. Urodele amphibians (newts and salamanders) are of particular interest to theories of sperm competition because most urodele females--in contrast to other vertebrate females--control the transfer of sperm from the male. Here we present a molecular study of sperm precedence and storage patterns in the rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa). First, we used microsatellite markers to show that female newts typically use sperm from 1-3 males under natural and seminatural conditions. Second, we mated experimental females sequentially to two males and collected fertilized eggs in a temporal series. Patterns of paternity were consistent with first-male sperm precedence and complete mixing of sperm within the female. This simple pattern of sperm usage, best described as "topping off," is consistent with the expectation from sexual conflict theory that free female choice before insemination eliminates selective pressures for the evolution of complex patterns of paternity manipulation involving cryptic female choice.

Observations from the Top Off exercise.

Thomas V. Inglesby, MDa For a number of reasons, an analysis of the May 2000 Top Off exercise is an appropriate place to begin this examination of the most important issues surrounding the containment of contagious disease. First, the Top Off exercise provided the most comprehensive test to date of our medical and public health systems' ability to respond to a bioweapons attack. It revealed valuable lessons as to how the United States might deal with future epidemics. By this measure alone, the exercise must be considered a success. Second, the issues presented by our panelists are all very much a part of what happened at Top Off, and a discussion of Top Off will put them in context with each other. Last, Top Off provides a good context for the scenario that will follow. My remarks are taken from an article written by my colleagues Rita Grossman and Tara O'Toole and myself. That article, in turn, was derived from the observations of 11 senior participating officials who were observers, partici pants, or controllers in the Top Off exercise, to whom we are very grateful. We also should note that this exercise brought out the best in medicine and public health at the state and federal levels in Denver, and many people worked tirelessly for days and nights on end during the exercise. In an effort to assess the nation's crisis and consequence management capacity under extraordinary conditions, the US Congress directed the Depart ment of Justice to conduct an exercise engaging key personnel in a response to large-scale terrorist attacks. The resulting exercise took place in May 2000 and was called Top Off, so named for its engagement of top officials of the US government. It was the largest exercise of its kind to date, involving $3 million in direct costs and much more in indirect costs.

Observations from the Top Off exercise

Thomas V. Inglesby, MDa For a number of reasons, an analysis of the May 2000 Top Off exercise is an appropriate place to begin this examination of the most important issues surrounding the containment of contagious disease. First, the Top Off exercise provided the most comprehensive test to date of our medical and public health systems' ability to respond to a bioweapons attack. It revealed valuable lessons as to how the United States might deal with future epidemics. By this measure alone, the exercise must be considered a success. Second, the issues presented by our panelists are all very much a part of what happened at Top Off, and a discussion of Top Off will put them in context with each other. Last, Top Off provides a good context for the scenario that will follow. My remarks are taken from an article written by my colleagues Rita Grossman and Tara O'Toole and myself. That article, in turn, was derived from the observations of 11 senior participating officials who were observers, partici pants, or controllers in the Top Off exercise, to whom we are very grateful. We also should note that this exercise brought out the best in medicine and public health at the state and federal levels in Denver, and many people worked tirelessly for days and nights on end during the exercise. In an effort to assess the nation's crisis and consequence management capacity under extraordinary conditions, the US Congress directed the Depart ment of Justice to conduct an exercise engaging key personnel in a response to large-scale terrorist attacks. The resulting exercise took place in May 2000 and was called Top Off, so named for its engagement of top officials of the US government. It was the largest exercise of its kind to date, involving $3 million in direct costs and much more in indirect costs.

Blowing The Top Off The Credit Account

Blowing The Top Off The Credit Account

Use of Artificially Created Douglas-Fir Snags by Cavity-Nesting Birds

Abstract In western Oregon, we created snags by sawing tops off live Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) (n = 821) trees and monitored their condition and use by cavity-nesting birds. We created snags in three silvicultural treatments: modified clearcut stands, two-story stands, and small-patchgroup-selection stands. We used two snag patterns: clumped and scattered. Created snags averaged 3.8/ha in density, 17 m in height, and 75 cm in diameter. Chainsaw-topped snags were used by cavity nesters within 5 yr of creation. Abundance of excavated cavities increased in all silvicultural treatments (P = 0.0001) and was higher in two-story and clearcut stands than in small-patch stands (P ≤ 0.0004). We did not, however, find that snag pattern (clumped v. scattered) affected use by cavity-nesting birds based on abundance of excavated cavities (P > 0.6). We observed excavated cavities in five hardwood species indicating that hardwoods represented an important resource for cavity-nesting birds. Creating conifer snags by topping and retaining hardwoods may retain or increase populations of cavity nesters in areas with low natural snag density. West. J. Appl. For. 12(3):93-97.

Will Expectedly the Top Blow off?

ix years ago-when the population was 5.0 billion comThe real chall pared with today's 5.5 billion-I spoke at the AIBS annual as biologists meeting about environmental trends and the imperative to make sense of uri critical decisions in the next decade (Lovejoy 1988). Today probiological div vides an opportunity to review how successful we have or have change, a not been. On the face of the matter, it does not look very good. pOpulatic Trends in population growth, atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide, and deforestation continue largely unaltered. To these trends one can now add the lugubrious state of all major fisheries; as Hardy Eshbaugh of Miami University of Oxford, Ohio, expresses it, we have clear-cut the

Pumpkins

question is this: What about the future of Appalachia? Who will speak for Appalachia during the current administration? We plan to have a series of articles which will take a serious look at the various aspects of Appalachia's future, based upon each author's own expertise. In this issue are three articles written by John Whisman, Bob Connor, and Bill Weinberg. We will have others on Appalachian future outlook in upcoming issues. Pumpkins Vines that grow faster than kudzu, pull down fences and wreck gates; popping up through tall weeds like new planets; heavy as a man and no handles— you need a forklift to load one for the trip to the state fair; come Halloween you take an ax to carve a face in that shell; cut the top off, drop a stone to see if you can hear bottom; you could hide a child in one if you thought he'd get out alive. —David Black ...

Comment on Davis's "Changeable Weather in a Cooling Climate Atop the Liberal Plateau"

This is a most stimulating article, rich in findings about the dynamics of shifts in national attitudes on matters sociopolitical. The analytic separation of conversion and replacement effects produces an interesting counterpoint, and the remarkable dearth of any noteworthy interaction effects allays at least a substantial part of our concern about the underlying indeterminacy of the age/period/cohort paradigm. My only motivation for this postscript is to ask what these data mean on the broadest possible canvas-the evolution of liberal/conservative feelings in the American population. It is possible that they mean exactly what the article implies. There are, however, discordant notes within the data themselves that give one pause. The first discordant note has to do with the fact that the time tracks of these 42 items go every which way from one time period to the next, even in the relatively aggregated assembly of the data being used. The presence of a lot of item movement but very little synchronization of it across items is not a configuration that cries out for some unitary trend descriptor for all 42 items such as or conservative. To be sure, there seems to be somewhat more synchronization if we drop out the two middle periods and look at end point data only (period 1 vs. 4, as in tables 3 and 4). Moreover, the netting out of all this movement, once items are keyed liberal/conservative, does not work out exactly to zero, but goes faintly in a liberal direction. There is nothing wrong with looking at end points in this way: indeed, it is indicated if we are concerned to distill small but true trends of climate from large but short-term blips of weather. And to top matters off, the faintly liberal resultant of all this movement locks in nicely with what is later shown to be a steady cohort replacement pressure in a rather unanimously liberal direction. This is almost a smoking gun.

Magnetic polarity stratigraphy in the uppermost Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, Pottsville, Pennsylvania

Research Article| February 01, 1991 Magnetic polarity stratigraphy in the uppermost Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, Pottsville, Pennsylvania V. J. DiVenere; V. J. DiVenere 1Department of Geology, University of Florida, 1112 Turlington, Gainesville, Florida 32601 Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar N. D. Opdyke N. D. Opdyke 1Department of Geology, University of Florida, 1112 Turlington, Gainesville, Florida 32601 Search for other works by this author on: GSW Google Scholar Geology (1991) 19 (2): 127–130. https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(1991)019<0127:MPSITU>2.3.CO;2 Article history first online: 02 Jun 2017 Cite View This Citation Add to Citation Manager Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Search Site Citation V. J. DiVenere, N. D. Opdyke; Magnetic polarity stratigraphy in the uppermost Mississippian Mauch Chunk Formation, Pottsville, Pennsylvania. Geology 1991;; 19 (2): 127–130. doi: https://doi.org/10.1130/0091-7613(1991)019<0127:MPSITU>2.3.CO;2 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Refmanager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentBy SocietyGeology Search Advanced Search Abstract We took 105 oriented cores from 340 m of the upper Mauch Chunk Formation at Pottsville, Pennsylvania, for a magnetostratigraphic study. The samples were subjected to progressive thermal demagnetization from 600 to 700 °C and analyzed by using principal-components analysis. A high-temperature component was isolated with a mean direction of declination = 351.7°, inclination = -28.4°, and α95 = 6.7°, and a corresponding paleopole at long 113.5°E, lat 33.7°N. Three normal and three reversed polarity magnetozones were defined, and it was found that the magnetic field was ∼59% normal and 41% reversed in the upper Chesterian. Herein we attempt to correlate the section to a previous study in New Brunswick on the basis of the paleolatitude (pole position) and the reversal pattern, and we postulate a correlation of the bottom part of the Maringouin section with the top off the Mauch Chunk. Such a correlation would place the Mississippian/Pennsylvanian boundary within the Maringouin Formation. Earth's magnetic field was of normal polarity at the time of the Mississippian/Pennsylvanian boundary. This content is PDF only. Please click on the PDF icon to access. First Page Preview Close Modal You do not have access to this content, please speak to your institutional administrator if you feel you should have access.

Ultrasound level detector and container counter

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John C. Van Dyke. The Desert by Peter Wild, and D’Arcy McNickle by James Ruppert, and Kenneth Rexroth by Lee Bartlett, and Edward Dorn by William McPheron, and Ernest Haycox by Richard W. Etulain

Reviews 163 John C. VanDyke. The Desert. ByPeter Wild (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 82, 1988. 52 pages, $2.95.) D’Arcy McNickle. By James Ruppert. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 83, 1988. 55 pages, $2.95.) Kenneth Rexroth. By Lee Bartlett. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 84, 1988. 50 pages, $2.95.) Edward Dorn. By William McPheron. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 85, 1988. 53 pages, $2.95.) Ernest Haycox. By Richard W. Etulain. (Boise State University: Western Writers Series, No. 86, 1988. 49 pages, $2.95.) The most recent in the Western Writers Series, these five monographs exemplify the series’strengths and weaknesses. Because of the fifty-page limit, one can hardly expect more than a quick biography, a somewhat superficial analysis of the canon, and a placement in the western literary hierarchy. Strong personalities seldom emerge from these works. Yet critics who care that feeling and thinking people wrote the works in question will find ways to reveal their subjects. They will also succinctly analyze works, revealing the breadth and depth of human discovery, the unique angle of vision that informs the author’sworks. When I read these booklets, I want to know something about the subjects aspeople, and Arny Skov’scover designs are interesting head sketches:a young, well-mustached, slender—even delicate—Van Dyke in Victorian suit is pro­ filed against saguaro cactus and buttes; Ed Dorn, baggy-eyed and stern, looks every bit the hero of a B stock Western and is sandwiched between two gunfighters ; McNickle looks like a bemused, transplanted Walter Mitty against meadow, pines, and mountains; Haycox, with ever so slight a grin, stares forward across two lead stagecoach horses; Rexroth has no western picture, just a frontal sketch of a professorial man in sport shirt and coat—but his dancing eyes, Mephistopheles grin, and wiry hair make him the only one of the five who appears to be any fun. Most of these impressions are borne out in the five books. Of the five, Van Dyke and Haycox are the best, though each for different reasons. One is quickly enamored of Van Dyke for the person he was and the vision of the desert he had, and Wild for revealing him with passionate objec­ tivity. It isobvious that he appreciates Van Dyke—istruly curious about him— and his first few sentences force the reader to confront Van Dyke’s intentions: During the late spring of 1899, a strange figure made his way east­ ward through windy San Gorgonio Pass and disappeared into the thousands of square miles of desert beyond. He didn’t know where he was going, his horses carried only Spartan supplies, and, to top off his prospects, he was seriously ill. The few men who watched him leave civilization shook their heads. (5) 164 Western American Literature Wild quickly places The Desert (1901), the groundbreaking book lauding for the first time the vast, arid, shunned desert, in the tradition of John Wesley Powell and Captain Clarence E. Dutton, and as a forerunner to works of Mary Austin and George Wharton James, Edwin Corle, Joseph Wood Krutch, and Edward Abbey. But what Wild does next makes the monograph successful. He simply asks, “What kind of a man was John C. Van Dyke?” He agrees that one can appre­ ciate The Desert without knowing Van Dyke. But “to concern ourselves with the central issue of his intelligence and esthetic life, what was the relationship between his most celebrated book and Van Dyke’s views of art and nature? With such questions, we are searching not only for the matrix of The Desert but for the shapes of the whole man. It turns out that they are largely one in the same” (11). Wild spends fourteen pages discussingVan Dyke’sDutch and Scotch-Irish heritage, indicating how “The refinement of his books results from conflicts in his background” (23). He shows how “romantic Van Dyke was a hardbitten realist when it came to the violence of nature’s lottery” (33). The search, whether in art, landscape, or life, is for unity, and Wild effectively argues that Van Dyke’s highest expression of unity...

AIBS News: Will unexpectedly the top blow off?

AIBS News: Will unexpectedly the top blow off?

Structures of the density field for summer environmental conditions within the 100 m top layer off northwest Africa : Schemainda, Rudolf and Eberhard Hagen, 1986. Beitr. Meeresk., 55:67–70. (In German, English abstract.)

Structures of the density field for summer environmental conditions within the 100 m top layer off northwest Africa : Schemainda, Rudolf and Eberhard Hagen, 1986. Beitr. Meeresk., 55:67–70. (In German, English abstract.)

On actual and climatological vertical structures within the 1500 dbar top layer northwest off Cape Verde Islands : Hagen, Eberhard and Rudolf Schemainda, 1986. Beitr. Meeresk., 55:19–27

On actual and climatological vertical structures within the 1500 dbar top layer northwest off Cape Verde Islands : Hagen, Eberhard and Rudolf Schemainda, 1986. Beitr. Meeresk., 55:19–27

The Accident at the Chernobyl' Nuclear Power Plant and its Consequences

In the early morning of April 26, 1986, as the culmination of an almost incredible series of errors that began 24 hours earlier, Unit 4 of the Chernobyl nuclear complex, a so-called RBMK-1000 reactor, suffered the worst accident in the history of commercial nuclear power. There was an uncontrolled nuclear excursion, release of a large amount of energy, possibly comparable to hundreds of pounds of TNT, blowing the top off the reactor. There was no containment, in the traditional American sense, so the roof of the building was blown out, an unprecedented amount of radioactivity was released to the biosphere, and a graphite fire was ignited, which burned for days. The radiation that was released spread through Eastern Europe (the world first learned of it through Swedish observations), bringing with it both official and unofficial protests that the Soviet Union had made no announcement of the radiation release until they were, in effect, caught. In fact, after a few days, the Soviets seemed to recognize that nuclear safety is a matter of international concern, and became quite open in their search for cooperation. They invited officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to visit the area and to flymore » over the plant, and agreed, in the end, to make a complete disclosure of the details of the accident at a special meeting of IAEA in Vienna, August 25 to 29, 1986. In preparation for that meeting they distributed a lengthy (400 pages) report on the event. This paper reviews this report.« less

Evaluating dredging and offshore loading locations for U.S. coal exports using the local logistics system

The formulation and use of a mixed integer mathematical programming location-allocation model, the Coal Logistics System (COLS), is presented in this study. COLS is used to evaluate the potential for reducing water-borne coal transportation costs, and concomitantly the costs of delivering coal to European markets. This cost reduction is accomplished through the use of supercolliers which would require the dredging of channels at selected ports or the use of offshore loading sites at East and Gulf Coast ports or both. The model developed and the analysis presented in this paper are intended to aid in the determination of the location and extent of these activities, and to indicate the size of the potential reduction in the costs of U.S. export coal. In order to be able to accommodate these deeper draft vessels at East and Gulf Coast ports, expensive improvements would need to be undertaken which may include the deepening of harbor channels to the depths required for 120 000 dead weight ton (dwt) or larger supercolliers. Since dredging requires large initial investments and has significant long-term maintenance costs, excess capacity could represent an inefficient use of both U.S. revenues and the ports' own funds. The use of offshore loading moorings to permit the “topping off” of supercolliers by self-unloading colliers at the deepwater sections of harbor channels has been proposed as a way of reducing trans-ocean transportation costs and avoiding the large investments and time delays associated with dredging activities. The Coal Logistics System was modified and extended to enable the evaluation of these two port improvement options to be undertaken in a consistent and realistic manner.

Software Reviews : 1-2-3 Forecast!

Summary: 1-2-3 Forecast! provides a highly user-friendly template for the popular Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet which can be used by economists and other social scientists interested in projection (or post- diction) models. Excellent graphics and an extensive tutorial top off the package, which should make an outstanding teaching as well as research tool.