Developing a Capacity Building, Operational Model of a Sustainable Recreation Program

Integrating sustainability concepts, tools, and best practices across the outdoor recreation and park profession has gained momentum over the past three decades. However, missing from the professional and scientific literature have been action-oriented and evaluative research focused on “how” sustainability is being operationalized in the field. Through a qualitative research design focused on the 11 National Forests of the Southwestern Region of the USDA Forest Service, we developed an operational model for how sustainable recreation is being implemented at the Forest level through the Sustainable Recreation Strategy. Data collection included document analysis, stakeholder interviews, and personal observation. Document analysis included a content analysis methodology of 11 Forest-level Sustainable Recreation Action Plans, the principal planning process used to implement the vision and goals set forth by the Regional Sustainable Recreation Strategy. Evidence from the study was used to develop a grounded operational model with three foundational areas of Program, Agency, and Community. Foundational areas were further elaborated into component areas—Program into workforce, communications, outdoor recreation management, financial management, and information management systems—Agency into leadership support, administrative support, and integrated resource management—and Community into partnerships, volunteer program, and conservation education. Operational models such as this can help recreation managers, agency leaders, and policymakers adjust systems, structures, and roles to build program capacity and accelerate program transition towards sustainability.

MODELING AND PREDICTING THE MONO RIVER OVERFLOW UPSTREAM OF THE NANGBETO DAM IN WEST AFRICA USING MULTIPLICATIVE DETERMINIST MODEL

The variation and non-control of the overflow of the Mono River adversely affects the performance of the Nangbetohydropower plant to the point thatitcan no longermeet the increasinglyincreaseddemand for electricity. This studypresents the development of an operational model for forecastingdaily river flows for the plants water retention. The overflow of the Mono River at the upstreamhydroelectric dam from 1991 to 2019 wasanalyzed and modeled by the deterministicprocesswith R software in order to makepredictions. First, the flow serieswasanalyzed by the ARIMA model (18, 1, 2) then by a multiplicative model afterremoving the seasonal trends fromtheseseries by the movingaveragemethod. The calculatederror of the results of said model revealsthat the deterministic model integrates the input generationprocesseswith an error of the order of . Finally, an annual flow forecasting program has been developed as a planning tool for the operation of the dam, in order to meet production needs and to plan water releases.

A view of global monsoons in observed and model climatology

A 17 - year (1979-95) January and July climatology obtained from a T 62/ 28 -level version of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) global spectral operational model is compared with a mean observed climatology for the same period obtained from its reanalysis project, with a view to finding out how well it captures some of the well-thrown characteristics of the global monsoon circulation generated seasonally by differential heating of the earth's surface by the sun in the course of its annual oscillation about the equator. Good correspondence between the two is found in the fields of mean monthly anomaly (deviation of monthly mean from the annual mean) of surface temperature, surface pressure, atmospheric circulation and total rainfall over most parts of the globe, barring a few exceptions mostly in circulation and rainfall. Large diversity in the distribution and intensity of monsoon found over different regions due to land-sea configurations, cold and warm ocean surfaces and high mountain ranges appears to be well reflected in model and observed climatology. However, the concept of a single equatorial trough moving from one hemisphere to the other to cause advance and onset of monsoon appears to fail especially over warm oceans, where there appears to be evidence in favour of two troughs, one in each hemisphere. It is the equatorial trough in the summer hemisphere that moves to bring up the monsoon in that hemisphere. There appears to be some evidence to suggest an east-west movement of monsoons between major continents and oceans.

The Integrated - Operational Model of Managerial - Legislative - Sports Training of Specialists in the Field of Physical Culture

Currently, the organization of the interaction of higher education institutions and social partners, responds to the "modern challenges" of the information society and knowledge, determining the development trends of the vocational education system. The analysis, generalization and systematization of the literature, the study of modern pedagogical experience, made possible the determination of conceptual bases and approaches for building a pedagogical integrated - operational model of managerial - legislative - sports training of specialists in the field of physical culture and sports. The model is based on systemic approaches, individual activities and research of specialists, the principles and objectives being focused on inclusive skills training and on the orientation of professional training on motivational, value, cognitive and reflexive components. The pedagogical integrated - operational model of managerial - legislative - sports training involves a certain organization of the educational process and the creation of individual or group pedagogical conditions for professional development focused on ways to solve problems identified in professional context, as well as focusing on creative achievement and innovation of professional activities. The professional training of future specialists in the field is focused on an internal process (because a person can acquire skills or learn through his own activity) and an external process (by creating adequate informational and educational conditions). In order to design the integrated - operational model of managerial - legislative - sports training of future specialists in the field, it was important to determine the essence of professional training, its place in the professional development of the personality of a specialist in the field and to identify factors influencing this process.

Establishing an Operational Model of Rating Scale Construction for English Writing Assessment

Rating scales for writing assessment are critical in that they determine directly the quality and fairness of such performance tests. However, in many EFL contexts, rating scales are made, to certain extent, based on the intuition of teachers who strongly need a feasible and scientific route to guide their construction of rating scales. This study aims to design an operational model of rating scale construction with English summary writing as an example. Altogether 325 university English teachers, 4 experts in language assessment and 60 English majors in China participated in the study. 20 textual attributes were extracted, through text analysis, from China’s Standards of English Language Ability (CSE), theoretical construct of summary writing, comments on sample summary writing essays from 8 English teachers and their personal judgement. The textual attributes were then investigated through a large-scale questionnaire survey. Exploratory factor analysis and expert judgement were employed to determine rating scale dimensions. Regression analysis and expert judgement were conducted to determine the weighting distribution across all dimensions. Based on such endeavors, a tentative operational model of rating scale construction was established, which can also be applied and adapted to develop rating scales in other writing assessment. 

Longitudinal Changes in Leadership and Person-Centered Care Over 5 Years in Swedish Nursing Homes

Nursing home leadership has been described as crucial for person-centred care and psychosocial climate, but longitudinal data are lacking. The significance of manager educational qualifications and operational model of nursing homes for perceived leadership, person-centred care and psychosocial climate also needs further exploration. This study aimed to explore changes in nursing home managers’ leadership, person-centred care and psychosocial climate comparing matched units in a five-year follow-up. Also, to explore changes in leadership characteristics’ and the significance of manager qualifications for perceived leadership, person-centred care and climate. Repeated cross-sectional, valid and reliable, measures of leadership, person-centred care, psychosocial climate and demographic variables were collected from managers and staff n=3605 in 2014 and n=2985 staff in 2019. Descriptive and regression analyses were used. Leadership remained significantly associated to person-centred care in a five-year follow-up, but no changes in strength of associations were seen. Leadership also remained significantly associated to psychosocial climate, with stronger associations at follow-up. Also, certain leadership characteristics significantly increased over time, thus, partly confirms previous findings. It was also shown that a targeted education for managers was significantly associated to person-centred care.

RNA virome diversity and Wolbachia infection in individual Drosophila simulans flies

The endosymbiont bacteria of the genus Wolbachia are associated with multiple mutualistic effects on insect biology, including nutritional and antiviral properties. Members of the genus Wolbachia naturally occur in fly species of the genus Drosophila, providing an operational model host for studying how virome composition may be affected by its presence. Drosophila simulans populations can carry a variety of strains of members of the genus Wolbachia , with the wAu strain associated with strong antiviral protection under experimental conditions. We used D. simulans sampled from the Perth Hills, Western Australia, to investigate the potential virus protective effect of the wAu strain of Wolbachia on individual wild-caught flies. Our data revealed no appreciable variation in virus composition and abundance between individuals infected or uninfected with Wolbachia associated with the presence or absence of wAu. However, it remains unclear whether wAu might affect viral infection and host survival by increasing tolerance rather than inducing complete resistance. These data also provide new insights into the natural virome diversity of D. simulans. Despite the small number of individuals sampled, we identified a repertoire of RNA viruses, including nora virus, galbut virus, thika virus and La Jolla virus, that have been identified in other species of the genus Drosophila. Chaq virus-like sequences associated with galbut virus were also detected. In addition, we identified five novel viruses from the families Reoviridae, Tombusviridae, Mitoviridae and Bunyaviridae. Overall, this study highlights the complex interaction between Wolbachia and RNA virus infections and provides a baseline description of the natural virome of D. simulans.

The semantics of shared memory in Intel CPU/FPGA systems

Heterogeneous CPU/FPGA devices, in which a CPU and an FPGA can execute together while sharing memory, are becoming popular in several computing sectors. In this paper, we study the shared-memory semantics of these devices, with a view to providing a firm foundation for reasoning about the programs that run on them. Our focus is on Intel platforms that combine an Intel FPGA with a multicore Xeon CPU. We describe the weak-memory behaviours that are allowed (and observable) on these devices when CPU threads and an FPGA thread access common memory locations in a fine-grained manner through multiple channels. Some of these behaviours are familiar from well-studied CPU and GPU concurrency; others are weaker still. We encode these behaviours in two formal memory models: one operational, one axiomatic. We develop executable implementations of both models, using the CBMC bounded model-checking tool for our operational model and the Alloy modelling language for our axiomatic model. Using these, we cross-check our models against each other via a translator that converts Alloy-generated executions into queries for the CBMC model. We also validate our models against actual hardware by translating 583 Alloy-generated executions into litmus tests that we run on CPU/FPGA devices; when doing this, we avoid the prohibitive cost of synthesising a hardware design per litmus test by creating our own 'litmus-test processor' in hardware. We expect that our models will be useful for low-level programmers, compiler writers, and designers of analysis tools. Indeed, as a demonstration of the utility of our work, we use our operational model to reason about a producer/consumer buffer implemented across the CPU and the FPGA. When the buffer uses insufficient synchronisation -- a situation that our model is able to detect -- we observe that its performance improves at the cost of occasional data corruption.