Land Cover Change in Mixed Agroforestry: Shade Coffee in El Salvador

Little is known about land cover change in mixed agroforestry systems, which often supply valuable ecological services. We use a spatial regression model to analyze clearing in El Salvador’s shade coffee–growing regions during the 1990s. Our findings buttress previous research suggesting the relationship between proximity to cities and clearing in mixed agroforestry systems is the opposite of that in natural forests. But this result, and several others, depends critically on the characteristics of the growing area, particularly the dominant cleared land use. These findings imply that policies aimed at retaining mixed agroforestry need to be carefully targeted and tailored.agroforestry, shade coffee, land cover, El Salvador, spatial econometrics

Tree Cover Loss in El Salvador's Shade Coffee Areas

Shade coffee farms in Central America provide important ecological services. But because international coffee prices have fallen since 1990, many have been cleared to make way for more remunerative land uses. This problem is of particular concern in heavily deforested El Salvador, where a large share of the remaining tree cover is associated with shade coffee. We use satellite images, stakeholder interviews, and secondary data to analyze the magnitude, characteristics, and drivers of clearing in El Salvador’s shade coffee areas during the 1990s. We find that 13 percent of these areas was cleared, mostly in middle- and high-altitude regions. Falling coffee prices were not the only drivers of this phenomenon, however: a downward spiral of on-farm investment and yields, debt, poverty, urbanization, migration, and weak land use regulation also contributed. Our findings suggest that stricter enforcement of land use and land cover regulations is urgently needed to prevent further clearing.shade coffee, land use, land cover, deforestation, El Salvador

Reducing Distortion – Identifying Areas to Improve the Quality of Randomized Clinical Trials Published in Anesthesiology Journals

Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) provide important evidence to inform clinical decision making; if these trials are of low quality, the resulting clinical decision will likely also be of low quality. The main purpose of this thesis was to conduct a series of methodological surveys that would identify potential areas of improvement in the quality of reporting for RCTs published in anesthesiology journals. Trial registration adequacy, adherence to CONSORT for Abstracts guidelines, and sample size calculation quality were all assessed, with a final chapter exploring the effect of industry funding on these methodological quality measures. While the results suggest improvement over time, the overall quality is still lacking. Industry sources funded a minority of the included RCTs, and did not appear to affect any of the measures of quality. More research is needed to confirm these findings and to identify tools for reducing the potential distortion emanating from low quality design and reporting

SCHOLARLY PROGRAM NOTES OF SELECTED WORKS BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, RICHARD WAGNER, AND JAMES STEPHENSON III

AN ABSTRACT OF THE RESEARCH PAPER OF JEFFREY CHOW, for the Master of Music degree in MUSIC, presented on APRIL 13, 2017, at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. TITLE: SCHOLARLY PROGRAM NOTES OF SELECTED WORKS BY LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN, RICHARD WAGNER, AND JAMES STEPHENSON III MAJOR PROFESSOR: Edward Benyas This document is a compilation of biographical and musical information that serves to inform the audience about the music presented at the graduate recital of Mr. Jeffrey Chow. The works discussed will include Ludwig van Beethoven’s Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 36 (1801-02), Richard Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll, WWV 103 (1870), and James Stephenson III’s Celebration Overture (1999). I have studied these in my fourth and final semester here during my graduate studies at the Southern Illinois University of Carbondale, Illinois, and performed them on my graduation recital on March 5, 2017. The purpose of this document is to provide a better understanding of the repertoire to be performed, including information about the lives and experiences of the composers, and the situations in which these works were composed, all to better serve the listener’s understanding of these works as they are heard. In studying and performing these works, various trends in the development of orchestration, melody, and harmony identify the individuality and creativity in each of these composers

The influence of corporate income taxes on investment location: Evidence from corporate headquarters relocations

working paper available at https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soa_research/1588/</p

Generalized Kahler Geometry and the Pluriclosed Flow

In prior work the authors introduced a parabolic flow for pluriclosed metrics, referred to as pluriclosed flow. We also demonstrated that this flow, after certain gauge transformations, gives a class of solutions to the renormalization group flow of the nonlinear sigma model with B-field. Using these transformations, we show that our pluriclosed flow preserves generalized Kahler structures in a natural way. Equivalently, when coupled with a nontrivial evolution equation for the two complex structures, the B-field renormalization group flow also preserves generalized Kahler structure. We emphasize that it is crucial to evolve the complex structures in the right way to establish this fact.Comment: Final version, to appear in Nuc. Phys.

Hematologic and Chemical Changes Observed during and after Cardiac Arrest in a Canine Model—A Pilot Study

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/90335/1/phco.21.15.1187.33899.pd

A multi-method and multi-scale approach for estimating city-wide anthropogenic heat fluxes

AbstractA multi-method approach estimating summer waste heat emissions from anthropogenic activities (QF) was applied for a major subtropical city (Phoenix, AZ). These included detailed, quality-controlled inventories of city-wide population density and traffic counts to estimate waste heat emissions from population and vehicular sources respectively, and also included waste heat simulations derived from urban electrical consumption generated by a coupled building energy – regional climate model (WRF-BEM + BEP). These component QF data were subsequently summed and mapped through Geographic Information Systems techniques to enable analysis over local (i.e. census-tract) and regional (i.e. metropolitan area) scales. Through this approach, local mean daily QF estimates compared reasonably versus (1.) observed daily surface energy balance residuals from an eddy covariance tower sited within a residential area and (2.) estimates from inventory methods employed in a prior study, with improved sensitivity to temperature and precipitation variations. Regional analysis indicates substantial variations in both mean and maximum daily QF, which varied with urban land use type. Average regional daily QF was ∼13 W m−2 for the summer period. Temporal analyses also indicated notable differences using this approach with previous estimates of QF in Phoenix over different land uses, with much larger peak fluxes averaging ∼50 W m−2 occurring in commercial or industrial areas during late summer afternoons. The spatio-temporal analysis of QF also suggests that it may influence the form and intensity of the Phoenix urban heat island, specifically through additional early evening heat input, and by modifying the urban boundary layer structure through increased turbulence