scholarly journals "Listen to the Trees!" A tribute to the father of modern cavitation research, Professor John Milburn, on the 20th anniversary of his untimely death

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. e005
Author(s):  
Virginia Gai Williamson

Over the last 35 years, the study of cavitation in plants has become an accepted and important component of the water stress studies performed by plant physiologists. Although the existence of cavitation had been known since Berthelot’s (1850) pioneering work on the tensile strength of water in glass tubes, the tensions at which it occurred in such systems were far more negative than were considered likely to occur in plants. It is to the late Professor John Milburn’s sharp observational powers, lateral thinking and problem-solving approach — illustrated by his pioneering detection of cavitation in plants — that we owe today’s field of cavitation research. John Milburn was constantly thinking of new ways to approach and solve plant physiological problems. In 1966, Milburn and Johnson published their seminal work on the occurrence of cavitation in plants, using data collected via a record player needle and an amplifier. After the invention of the Scholander pressure chamber (Scholander et al. 1965), it became possible to measure easily the xylem pressures at which plants cavitated. Milburn and McLaughlin (1974) found that such pressures were within the physiological ranges that plants experienced and so the phenomenon of cavitation in plants under stress became a fruitful field of research. Professor John Milburn was tragically killed in a flying accident in 1997. The premature loss of such a great scientist, aged only 60, was felt keenly in the Botany Department of the University of New England, Armidale, Australia, where he had been a Professor for 16 years, and also around the world. This article is a tribute to Professor John Milburn, encompassing several of his key discoveries (a rare recording of the sound of cavitation occurring in the audible range is included in this tribute), as well as some of the many aspects of the man. It is timely, on the 20th anniversary of his death, to remind ourselves that today’s experimental water stress research would be the poorer without John Milburn’s pioneering work.

2014 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 23
Author(s):  
Mahmud Alpusari

In line with the competency-based curriculum at the University of Riau, the effort to improvelearning basic concepts of science 2 courses puts emphasis on understanding the concept ofmatter, which is based on students' learning activities through scientific inquiry.Implementation of action research consists of two cycles in PGSD JIP University of Riau onthe odd semester of 2013/2014 with 55 third semester students. Based on the research results,lecturing process by applying the model of inquiry learning, students’ activity increased inwhich in the first cycle all activities are good category except activity I and II are faircategory. Meanwhile students’ activity in first and fourth in cycle II is good category, andvery good category in second, third, fifth, and sixth activity. Temporarily student’s learningoutcomes increased from pre-tests with an average65.45 into 77,0 in daily test I and 77.45onthe daily test II. Improvement from initial data to the first cycle was 11.55, while the datafrom the beginning to the second cycle increased 12 points. In general the improvement ofstudents’learning is possible because the learning model used is inquiry learning so thatlearning becomes active which centered into students by presenting a problem, then studentsare asked to carry out a simple experiment using equipment and tools, using data, arrangingreports, communicating the results of observations based on concepts and learned principles.Keywords: Inquiry, students’ activity, learning outcomes.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (13) ◽  
pp. 4336
Author(s):  
Piervincenzo Rizzo ◽  
Alireza Enshaeian

Bridge health monitoring is increasingly relevant for the maintenance of existing structures or new structures with innovative concepts that require validation of design predictions. In the United States there are more than 600,000 highway bridges. Nearly half of them (46.4%) are rated as fair while about 1 out of 13 (7.6%) is rated in poor condition. As such, the United States is one of those countries in which bridge health monitoring systems are installed in order to complement conventional periodic nondestructive inspections. This paper reviews the challenges associated with bridge health monitoring related to the detection of specific bridge characteristics that may be indicators of anomalous behavior. The methods used to detect loss of stiffness, time-dependent and temperature-dependent deformations, fatigue, corrosion, and scour are discussed. Owing to the extent of the existing scientific literature, this review focuses on systems installed in U.S. bridges over the last 20 years. These are all major factors that contribute to long-term degradation of bridges. Issues related to wireless sensor drifts are discussed as well. The scope of the paper is to help newcomers, practitioners, and researchers at navigating the many methodologies that have been proposed and developed in order to identify damage using data collected from sensors installed in real structures.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 7-7
Author(s):  
Cassandra Barragan ◽  
Stephanie Wladkowski

Abstract Diversity and inclusion are essential perspectives on university campuses. In recent years, there has been a nationwide decline in admissions resulting in changes to traditionally FTIAC driven college campuses. An environmental scan was completed at a mid-sized midwestern university to explore age-inclusive barriers and opportunities for change. In-depth interviews were held with 28 EMU stakeholders representing a wide variety of ages in leadership positions across campus. Students aged 40 and above (N=248) were also surveyed about their experiences on campus. Qualitative analysis revealed ageist attitudes about older adults and older students from at all levels of the university. Results demonstrate that initial responses to ‘age-friendly’ focused on stereotypes of older adults, but attitudes adjusted when reframed as older learners and further refined when older learners were defined as 40 and above. Additionally, there was a distinct disconnect between ageist perceptions towards older adults and older students which highlights the importance of intergenerational opportunities as an approach to combat ageist attitudes on campus. While these barriers require long-term and complicated solutions, participants described the many benefits that older learners bring to enrich the campus. Results of this research revealed opportunities to reframe aging in the context of diversity and inclusion efforts on campus. Adopting diversity efforts to include age can benefit universities in not only admissions, classroom experiences, and connections to surrounding communities.


Minerva ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikko Salmela ◽  
Miles MacLeod ◽  
Johan Munck af Rosenschöld

AbstractInterdisciplinarity is widely considered necessary to solving many contemporary problems, and new funding structures and instruments have been created to encourage interdisciplinary research at universities. In this article, we study a small technical university specializing in green technology which implemented a strategy aimed at promoting and developing interdisciplinary collaboration. It did so by reallocating its internal research funds for at least five years to “research platforms” that required researchers from at least two of the three schools within the university to participate. Using data from semi-structured interviews from researchers in three of these platforms, we identify specific tensions that the strategy has generated in this case: (1) in the allocation of platform resources, (2) in the division of labor and disciplinary relations, (3) in choices over scientific output and academic careers. We further show how the particular platform format exacerbates the identified tensions in our case. We suggest that certain features of the current platform policy incentivize shallow interdisciplinary interactions, highlighting potential limits on the value of attempting to push for interdisciplinarity through internal funding.


1924 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. D. Murray ◽  
R. Ayrton

Every bacteriologist is only too well aware of the many problems presented by the preparation of culture media for the growth of bacteriain vitro.


It is my pleasant duty to welcome you all most warmly to this meeting, which is one of the many events stimulated by the advisory committee of the William and Mary Trust on Science and Technology and Medicine, under the Chairmanship of Sir Arnold Burgen, the immediate past Foreign Secretary of the Royal Society. This is a joint meeting of the Royal Society and the British Academy, whose President, Sir Randolph Quirk, will be Chairman this afternoon, and it covers Science and Civilization under William and Mary, presumably with the intention that the Society would cover Science if the Academy would cover Civilization. The meeting has been organized by Professor Rupert Hall, a Fellow of the Academy and also well known to the Society, who is now Emeritus Professor of the History of Science and Technology at Imperial College in the University of London; and Mr Norman Robinson, who retired in 1988 as Librarian to the Royal Society after 40 years service to the Society.


Author(s):  
Joan M. Gilmour

AbstractIn Moore v. Regents of the University of California, the Supreme Court of California held that the human source of blood and tissue used by his physician and other defendants in potentially lucrative medical research without his permission could not assert a legal claim that, in doing so, the defendants had deprived him of any property right in these materials or the cell line developed from them. He was, however, permitted to proceed with his claim that there had been a failure to obtain his informed consent to the excision or removal of these materials, given that their end uses were not disclosed. The decision in Moore is but one example of the range of new legal problems created by the many and rapid advances in biotechnology, and of the attempts courts are making to respond. The judgment raises questions about whether these types of issues as between the patient and medical, research, and pharmaceutical concerns can or ought to be analyzed in terms of property rights. Are the general justifications for recognizing proprietary rights that have traditionally been influential in judicial decisions useful or helpful in this context? And what of the identity of the decision-maker? In Moore, the majority was content to effectively delegate much of the decision-making authority to the U.S. Patent Office and the Office of Technology Assessment. While there are no Canadian decisions directly on point as yet, the pace of technological advances, the potential for economic gain, and the international nature of biotechnology enterprises all set the scene for these issues' coming before our courts in the near future. This paper begins to explore the implications of adopting an analytical model based on property rights and to address the fact that the biotechnology industry already operates on the premise that such material can be owned. It concludes that the current legal regime needs to be modified to allow effective control of these new realities and suggests principles that might be adopted to address important concerns that are raised by the transformation of human tissue and cells into economic goods.


Music ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mario Aschauer

Bruckner was born in Ansfelden (rural Upper Austria) in 1824 and was originally trained as a schoolmaster. He only left this career path in his early thirties when he assumed the organist position at the Linz cathedral, his first full-time employment as a musician. It was also in Linz that he completed six years of training in harmony and counterpoint with Simon Sechter (1855–1861) as well as lessons in form and orchestration with Otto Kitzler (1861–1863) after which he commenced work on his first symphony in 1865. Bruckner’s three large masses also date from his Linz period. Concert tours to France in 1869 and England in 1871 brought Bruckner major successes as organ improvisor. In 1868 Bruckner became professor of counterpoint and thoroughbass as well as professor of organ at the Vienna conservatory. Success as a composer did not follow suit as quickly. His passionate admiration of Wagner—to whom he dedicated his Third Symphony in 1873—rendered Bruckner the target of hostility from the supporters of Brahms in Vienna, especially of music critic Eduard Hanslick. The latter was also instrumental in obstructing Bruckner’s employment at the University of Vienna until 1875, when Bruckner finally became lecturer of harmony and counterpoint at the university. Despite his fame as an organist and music theorist, Bruckner saw himself, above all else, as a symphonic composer and it is the development of the symphony as a genre that occupied most of his compositional interest throughout his career. Accordingly, the multiple versions of Bruckner’s symphonies have long been a main focal point of Bruckner scholarship. These revisions were variously motivated. Earlier works, including the three masses and symphonies 1–5, underwent reworking during Bruckner’s “revision period” (1876–1880), largely as a result of the composer’s evolving notions of phrase and period structure. Later revisions were often the results of performances or were made to prepare the manuscripts for publication. Bruckner’s former students, most notably Franz and Josef Schalk and Ferdinand Löwe, were involved in these revisions, although the extent of this involvement has never been entirely revealed. Starting in the 1920s, scholars began to raise questions about the validity of the revisions made during the preparations of the editions published during the 1880s and 1890s. While some accepted the authenticity of these texts, other influential figures—among them Robert Haas, coeditor of the first Bruckner complete edition—claimed that Bruckner’s students had urged the composer, wearied by rejection in Vienna, into making ill-advised changes or, worse yet, altered his scores without his knowledge and permission. The resulting debate, the Bruckner Streit, involved serious source-critical issues, but eventually devolved on ideological claims more than factual analysis. The process led to the first Bruckner Gesamtausgabe, which published the manuscript versions of Bruckner’s works starting in 1934, first under the editorship of Robert Haas and later of Leopold Nowak. However, these editions are now largely outdated due to the many manuscript sources that have become available since the mid-20th century. Haas’s work has also been criticized in more recent years for rather subjectively mixing sources. Therefore, two new complete editions have recently been started. Another topic that has fascinated Bruckner scholarship for much of the last century is the unfinished finale of the 9th symphony and its possible completion.


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