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The First Year Seminar in Science (SCIE113) was developed during 2009/2010 academic year through an exemplary collaboration between faculty, administrators and educational support staff in the Faculty of Science at the University of British Columbia (UBC). SCIE113 reflects the vision and values of the Faculty of Science and UBC by offering an enriched educational experience to its first year students. The small class format provides students an intimate connection with faculty, an opportunity for significant engagement early in their academic careers, and helps with transitioning to the university environment. The overall goal of SCIE113 is to introduce skills that cross disciplinary boundaries and that every scientist and student in science must master: how to constructively build an evidence-based argument and how to communicate effectively. The overarching course goals are to define and discuss the elements of a scientific approach, to think like a scientist, and to communicate science through writing. SCIE113 fosters the development of authentic scientific scholars through the construction, integration, and use of argumentation skills and through an exploration of science as a way of knowing using a collaborative class environment. SCIE113 engages students in interactive and collaborative activities and promotes learning of scientific argumentation and writing skills. In-class and out-of-class activities allow students to frequently discuss, debate, and defend their views of science. Specific learning activities such as case studies, targeted readings, and examinations of media and scientific articles allow students to evaluate the validity of scientific claims and to construct a scientific argument. Meanwhile, activities such as reflections, in-class writing, peer review, and discussions on the fundamentals of writing help students to improve their writing skills which are assessed by three short essays and a term project. The guided peer review process, which fosters collaboration, enables students to provide expert-like feedback to their peers. Faculty and TA feedback completes the review process. SCIE113 is an exemplary model of collaboration and is guided by best practices in instructional design. SCIE113 is a model of collaborative course design and instruction with a large, multidisciplinary teaching team. The design of SCIE113 is guided by best practices and continues to evolve in response to emerging research. The teaching team consists of faculty and teaching assistants from 14 different departments, representing four Faculties, with a wide range of expertise and experience in fostering student learning. The teaching team meets bi-weekly to cultivate reflective practice and to support faculty in their professional development for teaching this writing intensive course. SCIE113 is informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning. SCIE113 is informed by comprehensive research that is incorporated into course design and implementation and utilizes validated assessment tools. Frequent feedback from students and faculty, and measures of perceived and actual learning gains, ensure successful course implementation and promote student learning.

We propose new methods for assessing temporal changes in seismic velocity using the S-wave coda for repeating earthquakes and cross-correlation functions of ambient noise. For a pair of seismic waveforms representing a common source-receiver path, the relative change in path-averaged velocity over the corresponding time interval is directly proportional to the factor by which one waveform needs to be stretched or compressed with respect to the other to achieve maximum coherence. For an arbitrary number of waveforms, initial pair-wise stretch factors determined through standard approaches can be improved through solution of an overdetermined system and further refined through an iterative approach exploiting the singular value decomposition to minimize rank of the stretched waveform section. We apply this combined approach to both repeating earthquakes and ambient noise correlations for Haida Gwaii in western Canada, the site of a Mw 7.8 thrust earthquake in 2012. Optimal stretch factors for repeating earthquake families indicate that path-averaged S velocities dropped by up to 0.16% after the earthquake. Ambient noise correlations indicate that velocities dropped by between 0.26% and 0.39%, which we interpret to be more pronounced in the uppermost levels of the crust. We explore these results in terms of changes in crustal porosity and hydrogeologic conditions by considering the observation that hot spring activity on Haida Gwaii ceased following the 2012 mainshock and recovered over the next several years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Described is a set of FORTRAN programs, suitable for teaching and research purposes, that simulate contact and regional metamorphism. Equations, examples, program uses, and availability are discussed. (CW)

Background: Neck surface accelerometer (NSA) wearable devices have been developed for voice and upper airway health monitoring. As opposed to acoustic sounds, NSA senses mechanical vibrations propagated from the vocal tract to neck skin, which are indicative of a person's voice and airway conditions. NSA signals do not carry identifiable speech information and a speaker's privacy is thus protected, which is important and necessary for continuous wearable monitoring. Our device was already tested for its durable endurance and signal processing algorithms in controlled laboratory conditions. Objective: This study aims to further evaluate both instrument and analysis validity in a group of occupational vocal users, namely, voice actors, who use their voices extensively at work in an ecologically valid setting. Methods: A total of 16 professional voice actors (age range 21-50 years; 11 females and 5 males) participated in this study. All participants were mounted with an NSA on their sternal notches during the voice acting and voice assessment sessions. The voice acting session was 4-hour long, directed by a voice director in a professional sound studio. Voice assessment sessions were conducted before, during, and 48 hours after the acting session. The assessment included phonation tasks of passage reading, sustained vowels, maximum vowel phonation, and pitch glides. Clinical acoustic metrics (eg, fundamental frequency, cepstral measures) and a vocal dose measure (ie, accumulated distance dose from acting) were computed from NSA signals. A commonly used online questionnaire (Self-Administered Voice Rating questionnaire) was also implemented to track participants' perception of vocal fatigue. Results: The NSA wearables stayed in place for all participants despite active body movements during the acting. The ensued body noise did not interfere with the NSA signal quality. All planned acoustic metrics were successfully derived from NSA signals and their numerical values were comparable with literature data. For a 4-hour long voice acting, the averaged distance dose was about 8354 m with no gender differences. Participants perceived vocal fatigue as early as 2 hours after the start of voice acting, with recovery 24-48 hours after the acting session. Among all acoustic metrics across phonation tasks, cepstral peak prominence and spectral tilt from the passage reading most closely mirrored trends in perceived fatigue. Conclusions: The ecological validity of an in-house NSA wearable was vetted in a workplace setting. One key application of this wearable is to prompt occupational voice users when their vocal safety limits are reached for duly protection. Signal processing algorithms can thus be further developed for near real-time estimation of clinically relevant metrics, such as accumulated distance dose, cepstral peak prominence, and spectral tilt. This functionality will enable continuous self-awareness of vocal behavior and protection of vocal safety in occupational voice users. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Author(s): Richard D. Bardgett (corresponding author) [1]; Roger S. Smith [2]; Robert S. Shiel [3]; Simon Peacock [2]; Janet M. Simkin [2]; Helen Quirk [1]; Phil J. Hobbs [4] Parasitic [...]

The fractionation of B and its isotopes between aqueous fluid and silicate melt has been studied from 550 to 1100 [degrees] C and 100-500 MPa. Fluid-melt partition coefficients are 1 for rhyolite melt. This shows that B is not always strongly extracted from melts into hydrous fluids. Boron isotopic fractionation is large compared with the carbon and oxygen stable isotopic systems (especially at high T) and is most simply explained by differences in coordination (trigonal vs. tetrahedral) among coexisting phases. Combined with earlier measurements on illite-water (300-350 [degrees] C), B isotopic fractionation defines a temperature-dependent trend from 300 to 1100 [degrees] C. Because of the large magnitude and apparent low sensitivity to bulk composition, B isotopic fractionation can be readily applied to studies of diagenesis, hydrothermal alteration of planetary bodies, subduction-zone processing and arc magma generation, and magma chamber evolution.

Miller Range Shear Zone (MRSZ) constitutes ductile tectonites of Nimrod group in the central transantarctic mountains. Structural thickness of MRSZ is 12-15 km and has no exposed boundaries. Analysis of the deformation patterns of the outlying supracrustal rocks facilitates the examination of tectonic regime of MRSZ. A tectonic model explains the synchronous but different deformations. Various observations show the absence of deformations during subamphibolite facies cooling. Left-oblique convergence having partitioned strains characterizes Neoproterozoic to early Paleozoic plate margin of Antarctica.

The metamorphic evolution and dehydration of subducting oceanic crust may be predicted by combining calculated pressure-temperature (P-T) paths with a model of metabasalt phase equilibria. In steady-state subduction zones with high rates of shear heating, the upper parts of the subducting oceanic crust progress through the greenschist arrow to the right amphibolite arrow to the right granulite arrow to the right eclogite facies, whereas lower parts of the subducting oceanic crust progress through the blueschist arrow to the right eclogite facies. In steady-state subduction zones with moderate rates of shear heating, most of the subducting oceanic crust passes through the blueschist arrow to the right eclogite transition. In steady-state subduction zones with low rates of shear heating, the entire subducting oceanic crust lies within the blueschist facies to depths greater than 70 km. For oceanic crust containing 1-2 wt% H2O, dehydration will not begin until the onset of eclogite- or amphibolite-facies metamorphism, depending on the P-T path. For many subduction zones, the most important dehydration reactions in the subducting oceanic crust occur at the blueschist arrow to the right eclogite facies transition associated with the breakdown of lawsonite (or clinozoisite), glaucophane, and chlorite. Large amounts of H2O released by blueschist arrow to the right eclogite dehydration reactions could trigger partial melting in the overlying mantle wedge and may play a crucial role in the generation of arc magmas.

In this article, we present an upper bound on the representation dimension of the group algebra of a group with an elementary abelian Sylow p-subgroup. Specifically, if k is a field of characteristic p and G is a group with elementary abelian Sylow p-subgroup P, we prove that the representation dimension of kG is bounded above by the order of P. Key to proving this theorem is the separable equivalence between the two algebras and some nice properties of Mackey decomposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a number of subduction zones, earthquakes at 50-200 km depth define two dipping planes, separated by 20-40 km, that appear to merge downdip. Upper plane earthquakes are inferred to occur within the subducting oceanic crust, whereas lower plane earthquakes occur in the subducting oceanic mantle. Beneath northeast Japan, the results of a new finite-element heat-transfer model suggest that the lower seismic plane cuts across isotherms at a shallow angle. Lower plane earthquakes occur at ~550-800 [degrees] C at 100 km depth and at ~350-600 [degrees] C at 160 km depth. These conditions coincide with the dehydration reaction antigorite (serpentine) [right arrow] forsterite + enstatite + [H.sub.2]O, which suggests that lower plane earthquakes may be triggered by dehydration embrittlement, which in turn suggests that the subducting oceanic mantle is partially hydrated. Serpentinization may occur in the trench--outer rise region, where faulting may promote infiltration of seawater several tens of kilometers into the oceanic lithosphere. If this hypothesis is correct, current subduction-zone [H.sub.2]O budgets may significantly underestimate the amount of bound [H.sub.2]O entering the 'subduction factory.' Keywords: dehydration, earthquakes, metamorphism, serpentine, subduction zone.