625 research outputs found
Binge eating and binge drinking behaviors: Individual differences in adolescents' identity styles
No full textConsidering the significant negative consequences that are directly related to binge eating and drinking behaviors, many studies have explored the reasons why adolescents engage in them. This study examined the differences in the development, maintenance, and co-occurrence of "binge" behaviors associated with adolescent's identity style and the level of commitment. One thousand four hundred Italian adolescents completed self-report measures assessing binge behaviors and identity styles. Overall, results show that diffused adolescents were more likely to be engaged in binge eating and binge drinking behaviors than others, validating the idea that the achievement of a consolidated ego identity is important for enhancing well-being. © The Author(s) 2013
Code choice and code-switching in Swiss-German internet relay chat rooms
No full textIn the German-speaking regions of Switzerland, dialect is spoken by all social groups in most communicative situations, Standard German being used only when prescribed. Swiss dialects rarely appeared in written form before the 1980s, apart from the genre of dialect literature. Due to the growing acceptance of informal writing styles in many European languages, dialect is increasingly employed for written personal communication, in particular in computer-mediated communication (CMC). In Swiss Internet Relay Chat (IRC) rooms, varieties of German are used side by side as all chatters have a command of both standard and dialectal varieties. Depending on the channel, the proportion of dialectal contributions can be as high as 90 percent. The choice of a particular variety depends on both individual preference and on the predominant variety used within a specific thread. In this paper I take a quantitative approach to language variation in IRC and demonstrate how such an approach can help embed qualitative research on code-switching in CMC
Incomprehension or resistance? : the Markan disciples and the narrative logic of Mark 4:1—8:30
No full textThe characterization of the Markan disciples has been and continues to be the object of much scholarly reflection and speculation. For many, the Markan author’s presentation of Jesus’ disciples holds a key, if not the key, to unlocking the purpose and function of the gospel as a whole. Commentators differ as to whether the Markan disciples ultimately serve a pedagogical or polemical function, yet they are generally agreed that the disciples in Mark come off rather badly, especially when compared to their literary counterparts in Matthew, Luke, and John.
This narrative-critical study considers the characterization of the Markan disciples within the Sea Crossing movement (Mark 4:1–8:30). While commentators have, on the whole, interpreted the disciples’ negative characterization in this movement in terms of lack of faith and/or incomprehension, neither of these, nor a combination of the two, fully accounts for the severity of language leveled against the disciples by the narrator (6:52) and Jesus (8:17–18). Taking as its starting point an argument by Jeffrey B. Gibson (1986) that the harshness of Jesus’ rebuke in Mark 8:14–21 is occasioned not by the disciples’ lack of faith or incomprehension but by their active resistance to his Gentile mission, this investigation uncovers additional examples of the disciples’ resistance to Gentile mission, offering a better account of their negative portrayal within the Sea Crossing movement and helping explain many of their other failures.
In short, this study argues that in Mark 4:1–8:26, the disciples are characterized as resistant to Jesus’ Gentile mission and to their participation in that mission, the chief consequence being that they are rendered incapable of recognizing Jesus’ vocational identity as Israel’s Messiah (Thesis A). This leads to a secondary thesis, namely, that in Mark 8:27–30, Peter’s recognition of Jesus’ messianic identity indicates that the disciples have finally come to accept Jesus’ Gentile mission and their participation in it (Thesis B).
“Chapter One: Introduction” offers a selective review of scholarly treatments of the Markan disciples, which shows that few scholars attribute resistance, let alone purposeful resistance, to the disciples.
“Chapter Two: The Rhetoric of Repetition” introduces the methodological tools, concepts, and perspectives employed in the study. It includes a section on narrative criticism, which focuses upon the story-as-discoursed and the implied author and reader, and a section on Construction Grammar, a branch of cognitive linguistics founded by Charles Fillmore and further developed by Paul Danove, which focuses upon semantic and narrative frames and case frame analysis.
“Chapter Three: The Sea Crossing Movement, Mark 4:1–8:30” addresses the question of Markan structure and argues that Mark 4:1–8:30 comprises a single, unified, narrative movement, whose action and plot is oriented to the Sea of Galilee and whose most distinctive feature is the network of sea crossings that transport Jesus and his disciples back and forth between Jewish and Gentile geopolitical spaces.
Following William Freedman, “Chapter Four: The Literary Motif” introduces two criteria (frequency and avoidability) for determining objectively what constitutes a literary motif and provides the methodological basis and starting point for the analyses performed in chapters five and six.
“Chapter Five: The Sea Crossing Motif” establishes and then carries out a lengthy narrative analysis of the Sea Crossing motif, which is oriented around Mark’s use of θάλασσα (thalassa) and πλοῖον (ploion), and “Chapter Six: The Loaves Motif” does the same for The Loaves motif, oriented around Mark’s use of ἄρτος (artos).
Finally, “Chapter Seven: The Narrative Logic of the Disciples (In)comprehension” draws together all narrative, linguistic, and exegetical insights of the previous chapters and offers a single coherent reading of the Sea Crossing movement that establishes Theses A and B.
Family functioning and binge drinking among Italian adolescents
No full textLimited studies have sought to describe binge drinking among adolescents and even fewer studies have attempted to examine whether family functioning, family communication and satisfaction could be associated with alcohol abuse. Our sample was made up of 726 Italian adolescents between the ages of 16 and 18. According to previous research, adolescents were categorized into non-drinkers, social, binge and heavy drinkers. Results showed that social, binge and heavy drinkers differ in terms of some drinking variables, family functioning, family communication and satisfaction. © The Author(s) 2012
Near real-time detection of low-frequency baleen whale calls from an autonomous surface vehicle: implementation, evaluation, and remaining challenges
No full text© The Author(s), 2021. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Baumgartner, M. F., Ball, K., Partan, J., Pelletier, L., Bonnell, J., Hotchkin, C., Corkeron, P. J., & Van Parijs, S. M. Near real-time detection of low-frequency baleen whale calls from an autonomous surface vehicle: implementation, evaluation, and remaining challenges. Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 149(5), (2021): 2950-2962, https://doi.org/10.1121/10.0004817.Mitigation of threats posed to marine mammals by human activities can be greatly improved with a better understanding of animal occurrence in real time. Recent advancements have enabled low-power passive acoustic systems to be integrated into long-endurance autonomous platforms for persistent near real-time monitoring of marine mammals via the sounds they produce. Here, the integration of a passive acoustic instrument capable of real-time detection and classification of low-frequency (LF) tonal sounds with a Liquid Robotics wave glider is reported. The goal of the integration was to enable monitoring of LF calls produced by baleen whales over periods of several months. Mechanical noises produced by the platform were significantly reduced by lubricating moving parts with polytetrafluoroethylene, incorporating rubber and springs to decelerate moving parts and shock mounting hydrophones. Flow noise was reduced with the development of a 21-element hydrophone array. Surface noise produced by breaking waves was not mitigated despite experimentation with baffles. Compared to a well-characterized moored passive acoustic monitoring buoy, the system greatly underestimated the occurrence of sei, fin, and North Atlantic right whales during a 37-d deployment, and therefore is not suitable in its current configuration for use in scientific or management applications for these species at this time.Funding for this project was provided by the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program of the U.S. Department of Defense and the U.S. Navy's Living Marine Resources Program
Fast GMTI Algorithm For Traffic Monitoring Based On A Priori Knowledge
No full textIn this paper a fast a priori knowledge-based ground moving target indication and parameter estimation algorithm applicable to single- as well as to multi-channel synthetic aperture airborne radar data is presented. The algorithm operates directly on range-compressed data. Only the intersection points of the moving vehicle signals with the a priori known road axes, which are mapped into the range-compressed data array, are evaluated. For moving vehicle detection and parameter estimation for each considered road point basically only one single FFT has to be performed. Hence, the required computational power is low and the algorithm is well suited for real-time traffic monitoring applications. The proposed algorithm enables the estimation of the whole position and velocity vectors of the detected moving vehicles, even if only a single-channel synthetic aperture radar system is used
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Right whale ecology in the northwest Atlantic ocean
No full textThe ecology of the North Atlantic right whale (Eubalaena glacialis) was examined at three spatial scales during the summer and early fall on their northern feeding grounds. The diving and foraging behavior of right whales was investigated at spatial scales of hundreds to thousands of meters by tagging right whales with time-depth recorders to document their diving behavior. The vertical distributions of temperature, salinity and copepods were measured along the tagged whale's track with a conductivity-temperature-depth instrument (CTD) and an optical plankton counter (OPC). Right whales were observed diving to and presumably feeding on discrete layers of their primary prey. older stages of the calanoid copepod Calanus finmarchicus, aggregated just above the bottom mixed layer. Simultaneous visual and oceanographic surveys conducted in the lower Bay of Fundy and Roseway Basin were used to examine right whale distribution at spatial scales of tens of kilometers. Right whale occurrence was associated with greater depths and thicker bottom mixed layers in these regions. There was additional evidence of an association between right whales and ocean fronts in Roseway Basin. Right whale distribution was also examined on spatial scales of hundreds of kilometers by outfitting whales with satellite-monitored radio tags. Movements of the tagged
whales were compared to climatological and remotely-sensed environmental datasets to elucidate habitat preferences. The tagged whales moved extensively throughout the Gulf of Maine and western Scotian Shelf where they frequented shallow basins with cold bottom waters, but avoided deep, comparatively warmer basins. Two of the right whale ecology studies described here depended on the OPC for measures of right whale prey distribution and abundance. A final study was conducted to investigate the response of the OPC to C. finmarchicus copepodite stage 5 (CS). Comparisons between collocated OPC casts and zooplankton net samples indicated that the OPC was adept at detecting C. finmarchicus C5. A calibration equation was developed to predict C. finmarchicus C5 abundance from OPC-derived particle abundance
The Quest for Citations: Drivers of Article Impact
No full textWhy do some articles become building blocks for future scholars, while many others remain unnoticed? We aim to answer this question by contrasting, synthesizing and simultaneously testing three scientometric perspectives – universalism, social constructivism and presentation – on the influence of article and author characteristics on article citations. To do so, we study all articles published in a sample of five major journals in marketing from 1990 to 2002 that are central to the discipline. We count the number of citations each of these articles has received and regress this count on an extensive set of characteristics of the article (i.e. article quality, article domain, title length, the use of attention grabbers and expositional clarity), and the author (i.e. author visibility and author personal promotion). We find that the number of citations an article in the marketing discipline receives, depends upon “what one says†(quality and domain), on “who says it†(author visibility and personal promotion) and not so much on “how one says it†(title length, the use of attention grabbers, and expositional clarity). Our insights contribute to the marketing literature and are relevant to scientific stakeholders, such as the management of scientific journals and individual academic scholars, as they strive to maximize citations. They are also relevant to marketing practitioners. They inform practitioners on characteristics of the academic journals in marketing and their relevance to decisions they face. On the other hand, they also raise challenges towards making our journals accessible and relevant to marketing practitioners: (1) authors visible to academics are not necessarily visible to practitioners; (2) the readability of an article may hurt academic credibility and impact, while it may be instrumental in influencing practitioners; (3) it remains questionable whether articles that academics assess to be of high quality are also managerially relevant.Impact;Citation Analysis;Referencing;Scientometrics;Cite
Fine-scale spatial and temporal acoustic occurrence of island-associated odontocetes near a mid-oceanic atoll in the northern Indian Ocean
No full text© The Author(s), 2022. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Panicker, D., Baumgartner, M. F., & Stafford, K. M. Fine-scale spatial and temporal acoustic occurrence of island-associated odontocetes near a mid-oceanic atoll in the northern Indian Ocean. Marine Ecology Progress Series, 683, (2022): 195–208, https://doi.org/10.3354/meps13947.Temporal patterns of oceanic predators can provide valuable information on both lunar and diel influences not just on the distributions of these predators, but also on prey patches that are often difficult to study. Mid-oceanic island chains in the northern Indian Ocean have high odontocete occurrence, but the ecology of these animals is not well characterized. We investigated fine-scale spatial and temporal patterns of island-associated odontocetes using passive acoustic monitoring from January 2019 to January 2020 around Kavaratti Island, Lakshadweep, India. Based on opportunistic recordings in the presence of odontocetes, the majority of the detected whistles were likely made by spinner dolphins Stenella longirostris. We identified a resident population whose whistle occurrence was significantly influenced by month, site, and diel and lunar cycles. More acoustic detections were made in the northeast monsoon month of November and fewer during pre-monsoon and southwest monsoon periods. Distinct day-night differences along with fine-scale temporal variability were also observed, suggesting that delphinids use nearshore waters as a daytime resting habitat. Odontocete detections were highest during the new moon period and lowest during the first quarter phase. Detection rates were higher on the south side of the island. Our study shows that solar and lunar cycles modulate odontocete vocal occurrence, presumably through influences on their prey. Similarities of odontocete occurrence around Lakshadweep to other mid-oceanic island chains suggests that an island-associated micronekton community may exist around Lakshadweep that may also be important to other pelagic species targeted by local fisheries.Funding was provided by the Office of Naval Research Marine Mammal Biology Program, USA, under grant N000141812795.
We thank Ajith Kumar, the National Centre for Biological Sciences and Idrees Babu for in-country support
Interview with Thomas Duncan by Mark Madison, April 21, 2001
No full textOral history interview with Thomas Duncan with Mark Madison as interviewer.
Mr. Duncan discusses early life and how he wanted to be a waterfowl biologists. He would work as a temporary employee for the Fish and Wildlife Service before becoming a permanent employee with Fisheries. Mr. Duncan shares several stories of his time with the Service including flights he was on while in Alaska, becoming friends with Bob Hines, and his retirement.
Organization: FWS
Name: Thomas Duncan
Years: 1954-1983
Program(s): Fisheries
Keywords: History, Biography, Biologists (USFWS), Employees (USFWS), Wilderness, Wildlife management, Wildlife refuges, Work of the Service, Fisheries, Bob Hines, AviationINTERVIEW WITH THOMAS DUNCAN
BY MARK MADISON APRIL 21, 2001
MR. MADISON: Tom, like we said, we’re just going to ask you some informal
questions to find about your career in the Service, and have a conversation.
MR. DUNCAN: You wanted to know when I was born?
MR. MADISON: Yes.
MR. DUNCAN: June 5, 1928 in Washington, D.C. in Sibley Hospital. My father was a
Treasury Agent. We lived in D.C. until 1939 when he was transferred to Oklahoma.
When I was a kid I used to go to the Smithsonian. My Dad’s office was right across the
street from the Smithsonian, and right across the street from the FBI building and the
Internal Revenue Service [building]. I would go to the Smithsonian and spend Saturday
mornings there. That’s where my interest in wildlife started. I also played in the woods
in Glover Park in D.C. I found out a few years ago that I was playing in the Civil War
entrenchments down there in the woods. I would bring home salamanders and everything
under the sun, out of the woods. Of course, my mother would scream every time, but
nonetheless that was my youth. In Oklahoma I was taught the art of hunting by a friend
of mine, a kid in the neighborhood. We went duck hunting. I had a .410 shotgun. I will
never forget it. It was called a Black Prince. His father let me use it. The first thing that
happened was a flock of Wood Ducks came in and landed in decoys. There were about
thirty birds. I was all excited, thinking that we were going to shoot them. But he said,
“We don’t shoot Wood Ducks! They are protected, and very scarce. We very seldom see
them.” And right after that, a Black Duck came in and landed. He said, “We don’t shoot
Black Ducks. They are very, very rare here.” Pretty soon, some Bufflehead’s came in, so
my first duck was a Bufflehead. That started my interesting waterfowl. At that point, I
decided that somehow, I wanted to be a Waterfowl Biologist. After military service in the
Marines for three years, between World War II and the Korean War, I went to school at
Oklahoma State University. I got my degree in Wildlife Conservation. I came very close
to doing to Delta Research Station when they didn’t have any money. Al Hokebaum
[sic?] said, (I have a bunch of letter from Al who is my hero). He told me, “I’ll give you
food, and a place to sleep, but I can’t give you any transportation home”. I thought,
“How in the world am I going to get from Canada to Oklahoma, or from Oklahoma to
Canada?” I didn’t have a dime. I had to barrow the money from my Dad to go to Seattle.
I got a job offer in Alaska. When I was in college, I worked for thirty days at Salt Plains
National Wildlife Refuge under John Vandinacker. Vandinacker came up on June 30th and
Congress hadn’t appropriated any money that year. They delayed the appropriations,
which you know they do occasionally. So he says, “I have to lay you guys off.” There
were three or four of us who were ‘temporaries’ so we had to be laid off. That was the
end of that session, but I loved it out there. I decided, after doing fence post for miles and
miles, of the government way in sand, that I had really learned something, because that is
an art. That was between my freshman and sophomore year.
MR. MADISON: What year are we talking about roughly?
MR. DUNCAN: That would have been 1950, 1951. Then I went to Yellowstone Park
with Ollie Cope’s Rocky Mountain Fishery investigation. Incidentally, Walter P. Taylor
was the co-op leader at Oklahoma A and M at that that. That is now Oklahoma State.
Stebler came in after that. Dr. Stebler came to me one day, and he said, “Hey Tom,
you’re interested in the Fish and Wildlife Service aren’t you?” I told him “Yeah.” He
asked me how I would like to apply for a summer temporary job. This was through the
Albuquerque Regional Office. That’s how I got the job with the Rocky Mountain
investigation. I had to go out to Yellowstone. I hitchhiked out there, which was an
experience. I came in the east entrance. I went in and checked in and thought that I had
died and gone to heaven when I went into Yellowstone. I worked up there all summer
down at the south end of Yellowstone lake working on cutthroat tagging and retrieving
tags off of Pelican Island. I was digging through the dung, and picking up our fish tags.
Here again was a great experience. I met Fent Carbine who was a Regional Fisheries
Director out of Ann Arbor, Michigan. He had come up there for some reason or other.
He was the kind of guy that talks to you about things like what year you’re going to do in
your career and what year you are in at school. I told him that I was going to go into
waterfowl. He said that there was no way that I would ever survive in waterfowl, “ducks
are on the way out.” He said, “I’m a fisheries man, what you want to do is to stay in
fisheries!” I found out the next year when I went to North American when I was a senior
in 1953. I went to North American and I met Al Hokebaum. I thought that I would work
on a master’s degree. But he couldn’t fund me with any money. And I didn’t have any.
Fred Baumgartner was my advisor. He was a Quail Biologist more that anything else.
Fred told me that I should just look for a job. He said that he couldn’t help me any more.
The guy who I worked for in Yellowstone was Harvey Moore. Harvey had transferred to
Seattle. I had written to him and told him that I was looking for a job. He told me that
they needed a couple of people, early, to go up to Alaska. I said, “I don’t know anything
about Salmon.” He said, “You took Ichthyology didn’t you?” I said, “Yeah, I know
where they are classified, that’s about it. And I know that they come in a can!” So I
went to Alaska. I went to Seattle and they put me on an airplane. Harvey said that I was
the only person that he had ever seen picked up at the Seattle airport that was standing in
the rain looking up with his face in the rain. I told him that we hadn’t seen any for sixth
months in Oklahoma. I went from Seattle up to King Salmon, Alaska. I was all prepared
for cold weather. I had a big, old, heavy parka. And when I got off of the plane it was
something like 70 degrees. I was melting like a block of ice that had had salt poured on it.
When we were coming in on the plane, I noticed a big flock of swans on the Naknek
River. I remarked to somebody, when we got off of the plane that that was a big flock of
swans up there. I was told, “Yeah, they come in here all of the time.” Curiosity killed
the cat. I was walking up the river and I heard them trumpet. And they weren’t
whistlers they were trumpeters. I came back, and I said, “Hey, I thought they said that
there weren’t any trumpeters outside of Montana!” The guy said, “No, you don’t see
them outside of Montana.” I told him, “Well, there are trumpeters out there!” He then
told me “Those are whistling swans, they are always around here.” I told him, “No
they’re not! They are trumpeters!” Being so young and naïve, I thought that here was [a
topic] for the first paper that I could write. The next year somebody published a paper,
“New Flock of Trumpeter Swans Found on Bristol Bay”. I thought to myself, ‘Well, I
know who found them, but it’s too late now!’ I came back to Seattle and I worked over
on Cook Inlet, Alaska in the Anchorage area; The Kenai Peninsula, Lake Tustamena,
Kenai River, the Upper Russian River, Cooper’s Landing, you know all of these places.
There was another lake that was on the way to Kenai. Dave Spencer put us up for the
night many times when we would go to Kenai. But I traveled all over. I went out to the
other side of Mount Redoubt and Grecian Lake. I worked in the canneries out there,
taking Salmon samples. I went out in Bristol Bay. I was trying to think of the fellow
that took me out on a gill netter, so I really learned how to gill net Salmon because we
were tagging them in Bristol Bay for a management project. His first name was Burt, but
I can’t remember his last name.
MR. MADISON: What was it like to be up in Alaska in the 1950’s as a Fisheries
Biologist?
MR. DUNCAN: Well, the road to Kenai was a cord road. It was all dirt. The only
paving was from Anchorage, down to the junction where you went to Seward. That’s
were it was paved. But when you turn off to go to Kenai, it was dirt. This is one of the
things I always remember about Kenai; we used to fly in there once in a while, later on.
And you’d fly right over Main Street. I mean, with the wheels [landing gear] down you
could take the roof right off of the building, because the airstrip is right there! It was an
experience! As a Biologist, I really enjoyed it. It was outdoors, all of the time. We lived
on a lake, and they put us in a tent and had to survive. There were several times…
In fact a fellow who is still in Seattle, Kenny Liston, he and I worked together most of the
time during my first year up there. Most every summer Ken and I worked together. He
is about 5’2”, and I am 6’3”, so he’d always make me look for the Brown Bears when we
were going through the tall grass. And I had to whistle or something to scare them off.
We did these Salmon surveys on all of the spawning streams. We collected a lot of data
off of [word unintelligible] fish. I came back to Seattle, and after about my third year
they decided to put me in a different position. I took over what we called the ‘technical
staff’, editing and doing the graphic work for the Biologist’s papers, and photography. I
did a lot of photography. I became the lab photographer. That’s why I was asking you
why you didn’t have a photographer. I looked back in the Archives upstairs and I found
a lot of stuff that I had taken pictures of. There were SSRs, fisheries, and sonic tagging. I
was pretty proud of the fact that I had a cover on Electronics Magazine. From Seattle I
went into the tenth Departmental Management Training Program. This was another great
experience. It was a good training experience because you were interacting with people
from every other agency in [the Department of] Interior. I found out why we have such a
short administrative manual. This is because we’re kicked around from one place to the
other so often that that they don’t have time to build one. The National Park Service has
one that goes from this wall to that wall two or three times. They’ve got information on
how to drive a nail in the wall. They can tell you. Ours was real short. It was never
more than three volumes. I even had to write some administrative manual stuff. But I
had experiences, even up in the Secretary’s office, which was really good experience.
MR. MADISON: Who was the Secretary [of the Interior] during this period?
MR. DUNCAN: Seton. Seton was Secretary. And then, about a year later, Russ Sollen
who was the Executive Secretary; and this was the longest title for the smallest grade, I
took his job. Russ Sollen was the Executive Secretary for the Stalick-Kennedy Advisory
Committee to the Secretary of the Interior. Now isn’t that a title? And it was only a GS-
9! I stayed in that job for about two years. That’s when it was used to be the Bureau of
Sport Fisheries and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries, and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife
Service had an Assistant Secretary who was the one that came in… Arnie Swamlaw was
the Commissioner of Fisheries. I always remember going in to Arnie’s office to talk to
him about things with this Committee. I remember his desk was clean as a pin, and he
would be reading Sports Afield or Outdoor Life or something. I found out that this was a
political appointee. I don’t know if we ought to record this part! Then I was there at the
transition when John F. Kennedy came in. The first thing they did was to introduce all of
the employees to the new Secretary of the Interior. That was Stuart Udall. Man, what a
guy, he was super! We’d go up to the Secretary’s suite. I don’t know if they still do
this. It was really a top dog thing. One day I was coming out of Don McKerndon’s
office and I was coming down the hall, well first I have to tell you something else. When I
was first assigned this job, Elmer Higgins was the Editor in Chief of all publications in
both Bureaus for the Fish and Wildlife Service. They didn’t really have a place to put me
in the organization chart. So they put me under him. He said, “I don’t know why they
put you in here Tom. But they don’t have another place for you anyway”. He said that
he had to edit all of my reports. I said, “O.K.” He was one of the finest men that I ever
worked for. When he assigned me my desk, Elmer told me, “This is hallowed ground.
This is Rachel Carson’s old desk that you are sitting at”. She had just left a few months
before. I was really impressed by that. So after two years in that job, Paul Thompson
came over from Sport Fisheries. And I think Ed Carlson was involved in this. I saw him
the other day and I remember thinking that I knew him. But I think it was Paul and Ed
Carlson. They asked me if I would come to Arkansas. He said that they couldn’t get
anybody to take the Reservoir Investigations job in Fayetteville, Arkansas. I said,
“Fayetteville! I practically grew up in that place!” My Dad went to school there. He
was from right across the border in Oklahoma. He said, “You’re just the guy I need,
Tom!” About three weeks later, he came over and asked me again. He caught me at a
time when I was angry about having to do all of these reports. I went to Fayetteville. I
transferred down there, and transferred agencies. I went down to Fayetteville and set up
the South Central Reservoir Investigations. We worked on a Beaver reservoir, which was
under construction. We had a lot of contracts with the University of Arkansas. We did a
lot of cooperative work with the Arkansas Fish and Game Commission. We started off
on a very ambitious program. Then Bob Jenkins came from the Sports Fishing Institute
and headed up the whole national program. It was unfortunate, because to be quite
truthful about it, Bob and I conflicted. He was always telling my people what to do and
he didn’t go through me to do it. It was frustrating because I had been in the Management
Training thing, and I said “chain of command, chain of command!” Since he didn’t follow
it, I didn’t either. There were several other stations set up. And they closed all that
down in 1983. I transferred down to Arkadelphia when they set up the new one. That
was the Multi-outlet Reservoir Study. The SGA guy told me that we were the first
federal agency that had ever contracted with a private University for an office. There had
always been Land Grant schools. And this was a Baptist University, but they had a
water Chemist was renowned
Nationally, especially today. His name is Joe Knix. He got us over in their offices, and
they fixed us up with a real nice place to work.
MR. MADISON: We are doing three oral histories at once! You know, it’s a great
weekend! We want to try and catch everything.
MR. DUNCAN: Well, like I said, if you want someday I’ll just make a tape of all of
these stories and send it to you.
MR. MADISON: That’s great too. We will transcribe it and add it to the archives.
MR. DUNCAN: I was thinking about doing this for my kids because some of the stories
of things that happened to me when I was up in Alaska are pretty hair raising. I can name
all of the pilots; the ones that I liked to fly with, and the ones that scared the daylights
out of me.
MR. MADISON: Well tell us some stories about the pilots. Who were the good one,
and who were the scary ones?
MR. DUNCAN: Well, there’s one of them that is still around. His name is Tom
Wardley. Tom was a young buck at the time. He was the one that was always the hot
rodder. That’s what we thought of him. Tom Wardley, after he left the Fish and Wildlife
Service, became an inspector for FAA. I felt that he knew all of the tricks. There was no
doubt in my mind. He flew an “old Silver”. It was a Drummond Goose that we flew out
of Anchorage. They refurbished it and they flew it down on Oshkosh, Wisconsin. He
flew it down from Anchorage.
MR. MADISON: Was that for the Air Show there?
MR. DUNCAN: Yes. Wardley took me in on Lake Tustamena. There were Ken
Liscomb and I, and Carl Elling who was our supervisor out of Seattle. Carl is still alive.
It is eighty-something years old. He still goes fishing. We came in to Lake Tustamena
which is thirty miles long and about five miles wide. There was about a thirty or thirty-five
miles per hour knot wind blowing. The waves were about this high at the point were
we needed to go in and land and go in shore. Wardley says, “Well, we’ll just land
crosswind”. And I thought, “Golly!” I was in the Marine Air [Division] when I was in
the Service. I said, Crosswind? In this wind?” He said that yes, they were going to put
it down on top of a wave. We were drifting this way with the wind, and the waves were
going that way too. So he did, he laid that big Goose down on the top of a crest of a
wave. But you know what? That wave went right out from underneath it and right down
in the water we went. I just saw water fly everywhere. And I thought we were going
under. I couldn’t see anything but bubbles! I wanted to grab a lifejacket. I am telling
you, it scared the life out of me. But we got into shore. I looked at the tips of the blades
on the propellers, and they were pitted all the way up to the center of the hub. I am not
kidding. They were pitted like I have never seen. I had seen pitted propellers when I was
in the Marine Air Corps when these guys would come down and hit the deck too hard.
They would pick up water and pit the propeller. He got in, and unloaded us. And when
he took off it didn’t take him long to get off of the water because he went into that wind
and he was up in the air before you could blink your eyes. That poor airplane took a
beating! That was the last time that I wanted to fly with Wardley, but I flew with him
several other times. Warren Nicestrom came to pick us up on a lake called Blue Lake on
the west side of Cook Inlet, across from Kenai. It’s a little round bowl surrounded on
three sides by pretty high hills. But there was an opening on the south side that you
could out of. But there was a row of Cottonwood trees down there, about one hundred or
so yards off of the lake. To get off of the lake with a Grummond Goose, you had to go
around in circles and whip up the water real good for a few minutes. You had to go
around at least three licks. Well, Warren came in and he had a habit. We’d always fix him
something to eat because he hadn’t eaten all day. He always picked us up in the last part
of the day. We were sitting there frying some Spam, which is good for up there. We had
some Spam, and we were cooking. Warren pulled the plane up, the tail was sitting in the
water. We sat around and ate that, and cleaned the frying pan, put the gear away, and
stowed all of the gear in the plane. We were getting ready to leave, and took off. We
were trying to take off. We were going around skimming the water and he says, “You
know? This plane feels heavy for some reason or other!” I was sitting up there, and Tom
Costello was with us. Tom says, “Yeah, there’s something wrong here!” Well, when we
started to take off, he just gunned those engines. He hit them both, just full throttle.
That plane was just screaming across that lake. And I could just see the land coming up,
just like this. All of sudden, he dropped those flaps down, and that plane just lifted up,
just as we got to the shoreline. I said, “Holy Cow!” And I just buried my head! Well the
next thing I know, the plane is going over like this, and I see trees out of the window.
Just right there, and the pontoon took off the top of a tree! The plane finally went,
[makes a sighing sound], and he said, “Man, that was close!” He said, “I didn’t know
which tree to go between!” Costello said, “You did a good job Warren!” But I will never
forget it. We were climbing up out of there, and he said, “There’s something wrong, I’ve
to trim it. There must be water in it or something.” A Goose has a couple of windows up
on the edge of the cockpit where you can see out. As we were climbing up he said,
“We’ve got water streaming out of here like a jet!” When we got back to Anchorage, or
on the way back to Anchorage, and I’ll tell you, I told somebody that I have a guardian
angel because I knew that she was with me this trip. As we were flying back, he pulled
up to five thousand feet. That’s about as far as you can go in Anchorage because of
airspace and Air Force regulations and stuff. We were coming out of the sun at that
particular time. Tom Costello was an ex-Navy fighter pilot in jets. Tom took the wheel
up there, and he pushing it forward real quick while Warren was flying. Warren said,
“What are you doing?” All of a sudden a jet went right over the top of us. I mean, you
could see the guys face in it. [The jet] He pushed it just enough, it didn’t quite hit
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