Fine-Scale Plant Species Identification in a Poor Fen and Integration of Techniques and Instrumentation in a Classroom Setting

Refining carbon flux measurements in the carbon cycle is an ongoing challenge. This study attempted to identify plant species in Sallie’s Fen, a nutrient-poor fen in Barrington, New Hampshire, at a fine scale in order to better model and understand carbon exchange between plants and the atmosphere in this type of ecosystem. A protocol for estimating percent cover of species in plots via ground measurements was developed. The next stage of this project was to compare these measurements with measurements derived from spectral images using ImageJ computer software. Statistical tests of the ground measurement data revealed that patterns of seasonal defoliation had a strong effect on the apparent species richness, evenness, and biodiversity of plants as seen aerially. The presence of Sphagnum mosses excluded the presence of other species, but the presence of other plants only excluded the visibility of Sphagnum since it resides in the understory of the layered community. A regression comparing percent cover of the vascular plant functional group and fractal dimensions from a digital camera was statistically significant, indicating that ground and aerial measurements agree and that spectral imaging can be used to save time in the field in place of ground measurements. Additionally, since ecosystem science is such an interdisciplinary field, it provides the perfect platform around which students can apply their scientific knowledge and understanding. Modifications to this project were suggested so that it can be carried out in a secondary school classroom setting while aligning with the Next Generation Science Standards

Using Experimental Economics to Measure the Effects of a Natural Educational Experiment on Altruism

Economic research examining how educational intervention programs affect primary and secondary schooling focuses largely on test scores although the interventions can affect many other outcomes. This paper examines how an educational intervention, a voucher program, affected students' altruism. The voucher program used a lottery to allocate scholarships among low-income applicant families with children in K-8th grade. By exploiting the lottery to identify the voucher effects, and using experimental economic methods, we measure the effects of the intervention on children's altruism. We also measure the voucher program's effects on parents' altruism and several academic outcomes including test scores. We find that the educational intervention positively affects students' altruism towards charitable organizations but not towards their peers. We fail to find statistically significant effects of the vouchers on parents' altruism or test scores.

An Empirical Examination of Traditional Neighborhood Development

This study analyzes the impact of the new urbanism on single-family home prices. Specifically, we explore the price differential that homebuyers pay for houses in new urbanist developments relative to houses in conventional suburban developments. Using data on over 5,000 single-family home sales from 1994 to 1997 in three different neighborhoods, hedonic regression results reveal that consumers pay more for homes in new urbanist communities than those in conventional suburban developments. Further analyses indicate that the price premium is not attributable to differences in improvement age and other housing characteristics

The Energy Costs of Historic Preservation

We explore the impact of historical preservation policies on domestic energy consumption. Using panel data for England from 2006 to 2013 and employing a fixed effects strategy, we document that (i) rising national energy prices induce an increase in home energy efficiency installations and a corresponding reduction in energy consumption and (ii) this energy saving effect is significantly less pronounced in Conservation Areas and in places with high concentrations of Listed Buildings, where the adoption of energy efficiency instal lations is typically more costly and sometimes legally prevented altogether. The energy costs of preservation are substantial

Data fusion of activity and CGM for predicting blood glucose levels

This work suggests two methods—both relying on stacked regression and data fusion of CGM and activity—to predict the blood glucose level of patients with type 1 diabetes. Method 1 uses histories of CGM data appended with the average of activity data in the same histories to train three base regressions: a multilayer perceptron, a long short- term memory, and a partial least squares regression. In Method 2, histories of CGM and activity data are used separately to train the same base regressions. In both methods, the predictions from the base regressions are used as features to create a combined model. This model is then used to make the final predictions. The results obtained show the effectiveness of both methods. Method 1 provides slightly better results

An Historical Overview of Crop Acres in Western Canada: A Graphical and Statistical Approach

Crop Production/Industries, Land Economics/Use,

We Ran One Regression

The recent controversy over model selection in the context of `growth regressions' has led to some remarkably numerous `estimation' strategies, including 4 million regressions by Sala-i-Martin (1997b). Only one regression is really needed, namely the general unrestricted model, appropriately reduced to a parsimonious encompassing congruent representation. Such an outcome was achieved in one run on PcGets, within 15 minutes of receiving from Professor Ley the data set in Fernández et al (2001). We reproduce that equation, and corroborate the findings in Hoover and Perez (2004), who also adopt an automatic general-to-simple approach.

Emerging Market Countries Don’t Believe in Fiscal Stimuli: Should We Blame Ricardo?

Emerging market countries had by early 2009 announced that they will have remained fiscally conservative during the 2008–09 crisis, at least compared with the developed countries, which announced much larger fiscal stimuli. The authors argue that the difference in the pre-announced fiscal stance between those two groups of countries could be at least partly due to the awareness of Ricardian equivalence, that is, a higher offset between private and public saving in emerging market countries. They find that the offset coefficient is almost twice as high in emerging market countries as in developed countries, implying that additional government spending, that is, public dissaving, would be almost completely offset by private saving.private saving, Ricardian equivalence, fiscal policies