Basic Water Law Concepts

Water problems have always plagued New Mexico. Its inhabitants have struggled with how to survive in a land thirsty for water from long before recorded history. Just as past leaders of this arid land have tried to implement policies and laws to distribute the precious resource of water equitably, our present and future leaders will continue to wrestle with how to most wisely manage water in New Mexico. Modern water law has been forged by history. Concepts, attitudes, the language found in today’s constitution, statutes, and judicial decisions addressing New Mexico’s water law have long-standing historical roots. A brief overview of the peoples who have inhabited New Mexico provides a basic understanding of current water law

Adjudications

Adjudications are lawsuits that take place in state or federal court to resolve all claims to water use in the state of New Mexico, including those of Pueblos, tribes and the federal government. These cases are required by statute to create a formal inventory of water uses and to facilitate administration of New Mexico’s surface and groundwater. The geographic scope of each case is generally described by a stream system and occasionally by a groundwater basin. By statute, the State is always the plaintiff. The mission is to formally identify and recognize all valid water rights in each area being adjudicated. For expeditious and effective case management, a court may allow the case to proceed by smaller geographic sections: for example,the Pecos adjudication has twelve sections and the Lower Rio Grande has five sections

Blur Reduction in Ultrasonic Images Using Pseudo Three-Dimensional Wiener Filtering

The ability to quantitatively image material anomalies with ultrasonic methods is severely restricted by the axial and lateral resolution of the interrogating transducer. Axial resolution is controlled by the pulse duration of the transducer with shorter pulse durations yielding better axial resolution. Lateral resolution is controlled by the width of the interrogating beam with narrower beams providing better lateral resolutio

Antibiotic mediated synthesis of gold nanoparticles with potent antimicrobial activity and their application in antimicrobial coatings

We report a one-pot synthesis of spherical gold nanoparticles (52-22 nm) and their capping with cefaclor, a second-generation antibiotic, without use of other chemicals. The differently sized gold nanoparticles were fabricated by controlling the rate of reduction of gold ions in aqueous solution by varying the reaction temperature (20-70 C). The primary amine group of cefaclor acted as both the reducing and capping agent for the synthesis of gold nanoparticles leaving the b-lactam ring of cefaclor available for activity against microbes. Antimicrobial testing showed that cefaclor reduced gold nanoparticles have potent antimicrobial activity against both Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus) and Gram-negative (Escherichia coli) bacteria as compared to cefaclor or gold nanoparticles alone. The minimum inhibition concentrations (MICs) of cefaclor reduced gold nanoparticles were 10m gmL1 and 100m gmL1 for S. aureus and E. coli respectively. The cefaclor reduced gold nanoparticles were further coated onto poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI) modified glass surfaces to obtain antimicrobial coatings suitable for biomedical applications and were tested against E. coli as an exemplar of activity. The antimicrobial coatings were very robust under adverse conditions (pH 3 and 10), inhibited the growth of E. coli on their surfaces, and could be used many times with retained activity. Results from a combined spectroscopic (FTIR) and microscopic study (AFM) suggest that the action of these novel particles is through the combined action of cefaclor inhibiting the synthesis of the peptidoglycan layer and gold nanoparticles generating "holes" in bacterial cell walls thereby increasing the permeability of the cell wall, resulting in the leakage of cell contents and eventually cell death

Paraeducators\u27 Perceptions of Their Responsibilities Based on the Utah Standards

Paraeducators are increasingly involved in the education of students with disabilities. In order for paraeducators to properly work with this population, they must have adequate and ongoing training. Research has shown that paraeducators do not receive appropriate training in order to work with students with disabilities. The purpose of this study is to investigate the self-perceived knowledge of paraeducators working in special education and their level of training need. The study examines paraeducators\u27 work environment, responsibilities, knowledge based on the Utah Standards for Paraeducators and perceived training needs. Ninety-five special education paraeducators working in a large, suburban school district in the intermountain west participated in a survey. The results of this research suggest that paraeducators desire training in areas of their assigned duties. Overall, they feel confident in their abilities but are open to learning more. This study suggests that there is not enough training for paraeducators who generally work with the most at-risk population in the school

Impact-Induced Delaminations in Thermoset and Thermoplastic Composites

Laminated fiber-reinforced composites are engineering materials with many desirable properties including high stiffness and strength. However, the lack of fiber reinforcement in the through-thickness direction makes composite laminates vulnerable to foreign object impact loading. Transverse impact loading can lead to a variety of damages including matrix cracking, delamination and fiber breakage. Delaminations can reduce the strength of a laminate, especially the compressive strength after impact. Impact loading typically causes multiple delaminations that vary in size and shape by depth location. The fracture behavior of impact damages has been a topic of extensive research [1]. Recently significant advances have been made in the area of nondestructive evaluation (NDE) of impact damages in composites. For example, ultrasound is used to map out the details of impact-induced delaminations with ply-by-ply resolution [2].</p

3D Methods for Medical Education and Clinical Practice

New imaging technologies and 3D rendering software, in addition to being useful diagnostic tools, allow us to augment patient education and further medical student and physician knowledge. 3D imaging modalities such as CT and MRI expedite the learning process for medical students, allow physicians to better visualize the anatomy and potential pathologies present, and aid in educating patients to help them better understand their conditions. We present here 3D interpretations from a sample of CT imaging studies of the cerebral vasculature, optic neural pathways, and paranasal sinuses. These data were obtained from the NIH Cancer Database, among other sources. The raw imaging data was imported into a third-party image analysis software called Amira, which was used to primarily facilitate 3D renderings. From there, the project images were further manipulated and enhanced utilizing other third-party programs, including Autodesk, Mesh Mixer, Adobe 3D Toolkit, and Softwarecasa Camtasia Studio, so that they could be exported as 3D prints, interactive 3D PDFs, and 3D animations. Analysis of data, 3D rendering, and construction of the final products all took place in the Marian University College of Osteopathic Medicine 3D Research Lab. Our intent for the first step in using these projects for medical education includes making these 3D models available to first-year gross anatomy curricula, with the goal of helping students better visualize structures that may otherwise be problematic to view in a cadaver. Our ultimate goal is to have 3D visualization technology incorporated into various facets of medical practice and education: for instance, this technology may help physicians incorporate 3D visualizations of various pathologies (e.g. exact locations of berry aneurysms) into their everyday practice and patient interactions

Imaging of Impact Damage in Composite Materials

Conventional ultrasonic C-scan images are generated from information acquired within “gates” placed at specific temporal locations on low-pass filtered and rectified versions of A-scans. Placing the gates at temporal locations which correspond with interfaces allows the integrity of the interfaces to be examined. However, if the interfaces are closely spaced, as is the case for quasi-isotropic graphite/epoxy composites, the information from upper layers is blurred into the layers below because of the finite time duration of the ultrasonic pulse. This creates a low signal-to-background-level ratio, which causes blurring at and below the first interface