Internet-of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, and the Art of a Clean Deal: Who Owns What?

Internet-of-Things Devices, Intellectual Property, Venture Capital, China Manufacturing, and the Art of a Clean Deal: Who Owns What

COLONIZATION OF NORTHERN LOUISIANA BY THE MEDITERRANEAN GECKO, HEMIDACTYLUS TURCICUS

The Mediterranean Gecko, Hemidactylus turcicus, is known to have colonized nearly every state in the southern United States. In Louisiana, the Mediterranean Gecko has been documented in many of the southern parishes, but records for the northern portion of the state are limited. We sampled northern Louisiana parishes to document the presence of the Mediterranean Gecko. We sampled a total of 21 parishes in northern Louisiana and found geckos in 17 of those parishes, 16 of which represent new distribution records for the species. This indicates a significant range expansion of this introduced species throughout northern Louisiana. Geckos were found across a temperature range of 14.0–28.0°C and had a strong association with buildings. The species’ affinity for anthropogenic association and the continual nature of anthropogenic expansion facilitate the high vagility of this species. The result is a successful colonization throughout much of Louisiana and likely continued range expansion throughout the southern United States

Accuracy Assessment of the 2006 National Land Cover Database Percent Impervious Dataset

An impervious surface is any surface that prevents water from infiltrating the ground. As impervious surface area increases within watersheds, stream networks and water quality are negatively impacted. The Multi-Resolution Land Characteristic Consortium developed a percent impervious dataset using Landsat imagery as part of the 2006 National Land Cover Database. This percent impervious dataset estimates imperviousness for each 30-meter cell in the land cover database. The percent impervious dataset permits study of impervious surfaces, can be used to identify impacted or critical areas, and allows for development of impact mitigation plans; however, the accuracy of this dataset is unknown. To determine the accuracy of the 2006 percent impervious dataset, reference data were digitized from one-foot digital aerial imagery for three study areas in Arkansas, USA. Digitized reference data were compared to percent impervious dataset estimates of imperviousness at multiple 900m2 , 8,100m2 , and 22,500m2 sample grids to determine if accuracy varied by ground area. Analyses showed percent impervious estimates and digitized reference data differ modestly; however, as ground area increases, percent impervious estimates and reference data match more closely. These findings suggest that the percent impervious dataset is useful for planning purposes for ground areas of at least 2.25ha

UNCOMMON LAW:THE PRIVATIZATION OF DISPUTE RESOLUTION ACROSS THE POND

UNCOMMON LAW:THE PRIVATIZATION OF DISPUTE RESOLUTION ACROSS THE PON

Suburban Tiny Home Development

This project aimed to capitalize on a future trend in housing that allows for new sustainable housing solutions. Due to advancements in the virtual workplace catalyzed by COVID-19, virtual work and virtual work platforms have been normalized, allowing people who live in cities greater flexibility in where they choose to live. Many companies, including Facebook, Google, and Microsoft, have implied that they will likely keep remote work as an option indefinitely, allowing for increased flexibility in workers’ living situations. This change allows for employees to venture outside of the city to suburbs or even rural areas. The goal of this project was to assess one possible sustainable living option given this likely trend: a suburban tiny home community. The scope of this project included the design of a model tiny home structure, the design of water resource systems to meet in-home community water demands, the municipal design of the development, and a construction cost estimation of a single tiny home. It did not deeply explore further details such as the electricity or agriculture, which may be expanded upon in future iterations of this project

The Balanced Scorecard Combined with an Alternative Costing System

This project investigated whether a strategy framework such as the Balanced Scorecard (BSC), linked to a Performance Management System (PMS), would, compared to a more standard model of strategic planning, improve focus and research output by botanic gardens worldwide. The focus of the project shifted as the opportunity arose to develop an objective costing system linked to the related PMS, which allowed the researchers to posit that the BSC framework could provide a more effective contribution to governance. The research output was based on an in-depth case study at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh employing documentary analysis and innovative action research techniques adopting a constructive approach. This paper has been adapted for Sibbaldia having previously been published by the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) Research Project R220 (Macnab et al., 2010)

School Principals at Different Stages of Adult Ego Development: Their Sense-Making Capabilities and How Others Experience Them

The way school principals make sense of the context of their work shapes their actions. As in all adults, principals’ sense-making capability is a function of the ego and can change over time. Adult ego development (AED) theory describes distinct, qualitatively different stages of sense-making ability. The research reported here assessed the AED stage of 20 school principals in England using the Washington University Sentence Completion Test. Principals in the Self-Aware, Conscientious and Individualist stages of AED were identified. The research used a critical incident technique to analyse principals’ sense-making capabilities and how others experience them in their role as principals. The findings show substantive differences between those in different stages of AED in relation to their sense-making processes, the feelings they experience and display as emotions, how they involve others in the sense-making process, and how others experience them. There is a discernible trend in the behaviours of school principals and how others experience them that relates to the transition from the Self-Aware stage, to the Conscientious stage, to the Individualist stage. These findings have significant implications for understanding the practice of school principals

Blood falls, Taylor Glacier, Antarctica: subglacially-sourced outflow at the surface of a cold polar glacier as recorded by time-lapse photography, seismic data, and historical observations

Thesis (Ph.D.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2021Blood Falls forms when iron-rich, hypersaline, subglacially-sourced brine flows from a crack in the surface of Taylor Glacier, Antarctica. If air temperatures are low enough, the brine freezes to form a fan-shaped icing deposit. In chapter two, historical observations (including photos, oral histories, written descriptions, and field sketches) are evaluated using a confidence assessment framework to compile a history of brine icing deposit presence or absence during summer field seasons between 1903-1904 and 1993-1994. Additionally, an alternative explanation for a small, localized advance of a portion of the terminus is proposed: rather than temperature-driven ice viscosity changes, rising lake level drove temporary, localized basal sliding which induced advance, thinning, and collapse of a part of the terminus previously grounded on a proglacial moraine. In chapter three, time-lapse imagery is used to document a 2014 wintertime brine release that occurred in the absence of surface melt. This suggests that meltwater-driven fracture propagation of surface crevasses downward into the glacier was not a likely factor in this brine release event, as has been previously proposed. Further, there is no evidence for an increase in Rayleigh-wave activity prior to or during the brine release that would be characteristic of shallow seismic sources. Together, this suggests that sufficient pressure is built in the subglacial system to trigger basal crevassing and fracture propagation upward to allow brine release at the surface. In chapter four, two different seismic detectors that use ratios of short-term to long-term seismic energy variance to identify seismic events are compared. The detectors use different statistical distributions to determine what constitutes a large enough ratio to trigger an event detection. Differences between what the two detectors identify as events rather than background noise are interpreted as environmental microseismicity with a distinct diurnal and seasonal occurrence. Minimum detectable event sizes over 3-day time windows are compared. Together, these studies provide context for the history of brine release events, wintertime brine release characteristics, and descriptions of the local seismic environment at Taylor Glacier.Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Interpreting the history of Blood Falls and the Taylor Glacier terminus through photographs and field observations -- Chapter 3: Wintertime brine discharge and unexpected absence of associated elevated Rayleigh wave seismicity at Blood Falls, Taylor Glacier, Antarctica -- Chapter 4: The influence of environmental microseismicity on detection and interpretation of small-magnitude events in a polar glacier setting -- Chapter 5: Conclusions