Publications

A general overview of the industrial diamond industry in 2009 is presented. Topics discussed are consumption, prices, imports and exports, government stockpiles, and the outlook for 2010.

Ammonia was produced by 13 companies at 23 plants in 16 states during 2009. Sixty percent of all U.S. ammonia production capacity was centered in Louisiana. Oklahoma and Texas because of those states' large reserves of natural gas, the dominant domestic feedstock. In 2009, U.S. producers operated at about 83 percent of their rated capacity (excluding plants that were idle for the entire...

No abstract available.

The article features the industrial mineral fluorspar, used in the manufacture of fluorochemicals, aluminum and steel. It defines fluorspar as crude or beneficiated material, mined or milled for the non-metallic mineral fluorite or calcium fluoride. Applications of acid-grade fluorspar in the U.S. are presented, including production of hydrofluoric acid for chemical production of...

Regional equations and procedures were developed for estimating seasonal 1-day 10-year, 7-day 10-year, and 30-day 5-year hydrologically based low-flow frequency values for unregulated streams in West Virginia. Regional equations and procedures also were developed for estimating the seasonal U.S. Environmental Protection Agency harmonic-mean flows and the 50-percent flow-duration values...

In 1843, six years before the Forty-niners headed west for the goldfields of California, the United States’ first great mineral rush began to a land that was, as Patrick Henry told Congress, “beyond the most distant wilderness and remote as the moon.” He was referring to the Keweenaw Peninsula of northern Michigan. This rush was not for gold or silver, but for copper. And not just any...

An inability to predict population response to future habitat projections is a shortcoming in bird conservation planning. We sought to predict avian response to projections of future forest conditions that were developed from nationwide forest surveys within the Forest Inventory and Analysis (FIA) program. To accomplish this, we evaluated the historical relationship between silvicolous...

The devastating 12 January 2010 Haiti earthquake (M = 7.0), which killed an estimated 230,000 people and caused extensive damage to homes and buildings, drew attention to the crucial need for improved knowledge of the active tectonics of the Caribbean region. But even before this disastrous event, interest in understanding the active and complex northeastern Caribbean plate boundary had...

The hydrogeologic framework of fractured sedimentary bedrock at the former Naval Air Warfare Center (NAWC), Trenton, New Jersey, a trichloroethylene (TCE)-contaminated site in the Newark Basin, is developed using an understanding of the geologic history of the strata, gamma-ray logs, and rock cores. NAWC is the newest field research site established as part of the U.S. Geological Survey...

Estimates of survival for the young of a species are critical for population models. These models can often be improved by determining the effects of management actions and population abundance on this demographic parameter. We used multiple sources of data collected during 1982–2008 and a live-recapture dead-recovery modeling framework to estimate and model survival of Florida panther...

The acute oral toxicity of the anticoagulant rodenticide diphacinone was found to be about 20 times greater to American kestrels (LD50=97 mg/kg) than to northern bobwhite (LD50=2,014 mg/kg). Several precise and sensitive clotting assays (prothrombin time, Russell's Viper venom time, thrombin clotting time) were adapted for use in these species, and this combination of assays is...

We investigated the phylogenetic relationships of Campylorhamphus pucherani using DNA sequences from three mitochondrial genes and a nuclear intron, as well as 84 morphological characters from the skeleton, the integument, and the musculature. The molecular phylogeny indicated that C. pucherani is not part of Campylorhamphus; instead, it is the sister species to Drymornis bridgesii, in a...