Salt tolerance of common green roof and green wall plants

Detrimental effects of road deicing salt on vegetation are well known and have been well studied, with the exception of typical green roof plants, which could experience damage on green roofs with public access and green walls near roadways in cold climates. Two studies were conducted comparing salt tolerance of five Sedum species, two Allium species and a mixture of turf grasses when exposed to six levels of salinity applied either as foliar spray or as liquid applications to the soil. A third study compared salt tolerance when plants were placed at three distances from a major highway. Response variables measured included survival, a health score from 0 to 5, and a growth index. Allium cernuum, A. senscens and S. ellecombianum were relatively tolerant of both saline spray and soil inundation at high saline concentrations in terms of survival, mean health scores, percentage of healthy plants and growth index. Sedum reflexum was much less tolerant of saline spray at higher salinity concentrations and soil inundation regardless of salinity levels. Distance from the road had no effect on plant survival rates but plants farthest from the road had higher mean health scores and a greater percentage of healthy plants than plants closer to the highway.     

A note on trend-free block designs

Trend-free and nearly trend-free block designs were developed to eliminate polynomial trends across the plots of experimental designs. Yeh, Bradley and Notz (1985) proved that certain nearly trend-free designs are A- and D-optimal in a subclass of all competing designs. This article extends that result by enlarging the class of designs for which the optimality holds, and by increasing the class of optimality criteria from A- and D-optimality to the class of all Schur-convex nonincreasing functions.     

THE ROBUSTNESS OF BINARY AND NON-BINARY BALANCED NESTED ROW-COLUMN DESIGNS UNDER THE UNAVAILABILITY OF BLOCKS: A COMPARISON

In cases where both exist, the balanced, binary nested row-column designs are known to be inferior to a class of balanced non-binary designs. However, if it is possible for blocks of observations to become unavailable after an experiment has commenced, a binary nested row-column design may possibly be better than a non-binary one. This paper investigates the robustness of binary and non-binary variance-balanced nested row-column designs to the unavailability of one or more blocks of observations. Robustness is measured through the C-matrices of the designs resulting from removing blocks, using optimality criteria such as A-, D-, E- and MV-optimality.     

A preliminary investigation of the components of a curriculum for the preparation of master's-level addiction counselors

This study identified the preliminary curriculum components for the preparation of graduate-level addiction counselors. A review of the related literature revealed no agreed upon standards for post baccalaureate instruction of addiction counseling. The Delphi method was used to establish curriculum items from a list of 198 previously identified work behaviors associated with graduate-level addiction counseling. A panel of 28 addiction counseling experts responded to three administrations of an evolving questionnaire and reached consensus on a final list of 89 curriculum items. Consensus of expert judgments was corroborated by a post hoc multivariate of analysis of variance (MANOVA) that revealed no significant differences in ratings of importance among panelist subgroups.