University of Missouri

About: University of Missouri is a education organization based out in Columbia, Missouri, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 41427 authors who have published 83598 publications receiving 2911437 citations. The organization is also known as: Mizzou & Missouri-Columbia.

A Manual for Wildlife Radio Tagging

Abstract: as the allocation of the genus Phodilus to the Tytonidae, are confirmed. Relationships that make biogeographic sense, such as the monophyly of New World Otus and of Old World Otus, are recovered. Other results are surprising: the two Otus clades are not sister groups, and Ketupa and Nyctea are deeply embedded within Bubo. Overall, however, these molecular results are not very robust and ought not to be used as the basis for a revision of owl taxonomy. Alternate methods for inferring phylogenetic trees were used, such as parsimony, likelihood, and neighbor-joining, and they led to some surprisingly different results. In addition, the usually employed indices of robustness in phylogenetic analyses, such as bootstrap confidence levels for nodes on trees, are moderately high only for some nodes in the neighbor-joining tree. For example, they range from 0.5 to 0.7 for older, intergeneric relationships, but for the most part are less than 0.5 for the parsimony analysis. Much more mitochondrial data or slower-evolving nuclear genes are going to be required to settle the problem of intergeneric relationships among owls. It is fortunate, therefore, that KtSnig et al. have not adopted many of the DNA results in their classification. For example, most New and Old World Otus remain in that genus, and the Snowy Owl remains in Nyctea. However, O. leucotis becomes Ptilopsis leucotis and P. granti (taxa that may be more closely related to Asio than to Otus), and Ketupa and Ciccaba re merged into Bubo and Strix, respectively. Despite our criticisms, KtSnig et al.'s Owls will be useful as the only medium-sized (and thus easily transported) book that illustrates and discusses all of the world's owls and as a source for many of the latest thoughts about owl systematics. However, readers must be cognizant of the fact that the lack of scholarship revealed in this book renders it nearly useless as a modern summary of what is known about the biology of the world's owls. The door continues to remain wide open for someone to tackle the challenging task of adequately synthesizing the current literature on the more than 200 species of strigiforms thought to occur in the world today.--JEFFREY S. MARKS, Montana Cooperative Wildlife Research Unit, University of Montana, Missoula, Montana 59812, USA. E-mail: jmarks@selway. umt.edu GEORGE BARROWCLOUGH, Department of Ornithology, American Museum of Natural History, Central Park West at 79th Street, New York, New York 10024, USA. E-mail: gfb@amnh.org

On the tuning of electrical and thermal transport in thermoelectrics: an integrated theory–experiment perspective

Abstract: During the last two decades, we have witnessed great progress in research on thermoelectrics. There are two primary focuses. One is the fundamental understanding of electrical and thermal transport, enabled by the interplay of theory and experiment; the other is the substantial enhancement of the performance of various thermoelectric materials, through synergistic optimisation of those intercorrelated transport parameters. Here we review some of the successful strategies for tuning electrical and thermal transport. For electrical transport, we start from the classical but still very active strategy of tuning band degeneracy (or band convergence), then discuss the engineering of carrier scattering, and finally address the concept of conduction channels and conductive networks that emerge in complex thermoelectric materials. For thermal transport, we summarise the approaches for studying thermal transport based on phonon–phonon interactions valid for conventional solids, as well as some quantitative efforts for nanostructures. We also discuss the thermal transport in complex materials with chemical-bond hierarchy, in which a portion of the atoms (or subunits) are weakly bonded to the rest of the structure, leading to an intrinsic manifestation of part-crystalline part-liquid state at elevated temperatures. In this review, we provide a summary of achievements made in recent studies of thermoelectric transport properties, and demonstrate how they have led to improvements in thermoelectric performance by the integration of modern theory and experiment, and point out some challenges and possible directions.

Multisystemic treatment: a meta-analysis of outcome studies.

Abstract: Multisystemic treatment (MST) is a family- and home-based therapeutic approach that has been found to be effective in treating antisocial youths and that has recently been applied to youths with serious emotional disturbances. In light of the increasing dissemination of MST, this review examines the effectiveness of MST by quantifying and summarizing the magnitude of effects (treatment outcomes) across all eligible MST outcome studies. Included in a meta-analysis were 7 primary outcome studies and 4 secondary studies involving a total of 708 participants. Results indicated that across different presenting problems and samples, the average effect of MST was d = .55; following treatment, youths and their families treated with MST were functioning better than 70% of youths and families treated alternatively. Results also showed that the average effect of MST was larger in studies involving graduate student therapists (i.e., efficacy studies; d = .81) than in studies with therapists from the community (i.e., effectiveness studies; d = .26). In addition, MST demonstrated larger effects on measures of family relations than on measures of individual adjustment or peer relations.

Reduced sigma point filters for the propagation of means and covariances through nonlinear transformations

Abstract: The Unscented Transform (UT) approximates the result of applying a specified nonlinear transformation to a given mean and covariance estimate. The UT works by constructing a set of points, referred to as sigma points, which has the same known statistics, e.g., first and second and possibly higher moments, as the given estimate. The given nonlinear transformation Is applied to the set, and the unscented estimate is obtained by computing the statistics of the transformed set of sigma points. For example, the mean and covariance of the transformed set approximates the nonlinear transformation of the original mean and covariance estimate. The computational efficiency of the UT therefore depends on the number of sigma points required to capture the known statistics of the original estimate. In this paper we examine methods for minimizing the number of sigma points for real-time control, estimation, and filtering applications. We demonstrate results in a 3D localization example.

Assessing alcohol problems in college students.

Abstract: Alcohol abuse among college students is prevalent, yet few instruments with sound reliability and validity are available to assess these problems in this population. As part of a large, baseline assessment battery for a prospective study of offspring of alcoholics, the 27-item Young Adult Alcohol Problems Screening Test (YAAPST) was given to 490 freshmen at a large midwestern university; approximately 9 months later, 482 subjects completed the scale again. In addition to asking about such traditional problems as experiencing blackouts and driving while intoxicated, the YAAPST included specific items relating to college experiences (eg, getting into sexual situations that were later regretted, missing classes, and receiving lower grades than usual). The YAAPST was designed to assess these drinking consequences over two different time frames, lifetime and past year, and also to indicate the frequency of occurrence during the past year. Results indicated that the YAAPST is a unidimensional scale with good psychometric properties (good internal consistency and test-retest reliability). Three different approaches were used to demonstrate the validity of the YAAPST. Findings supported criterion validity (with interview-based alcohol abuse/dependence diagnoses as the criterion), concurrent validity (comparing the YAAPST with other drinking measures), and construct validity (correlating the YAAPST with etiologically relevant personality, motivational, and peer influence variables). The YAAPST is a promising screening instrument for alcohol problems in college students. It has excellent psychometric properties and the potential to provide a range of useful information to the clinician or researcher.