GLACIER NATIONAL PARK BAT INVENTORY AND MONITORING Project

Prior to 2011, no formal bat surveys had been conducted in Glacier National Park (GNP). Given concerns about high bat mortalities due to the continual spread of white-nose syndrome (WNS) and placement of wind energy facilities, it was critical to learn about GNP’s bat diversity, abundance, and distributions before these risks could potentially impact our populations. Of the 11 potential species in GNP, six are Montana (or potential) species of concern. Three years of surveys have now been completed. Survey techniques included mist-netting, acoustic surveys, bridge, building, and cave inspections. To date, we have mist-netted bats over 44 nights in 24 sample units (grid cells-each unit 10 km2) in GNP, processing a total of 700 individuals. Results indicated no sign of WNS. In addition, we conducted nighttime acoustic surveys at 97 different locations within 31 grid cells. Thus far, we have confirmed nine different bat species throughout the park and added three new bat species to the mammals list for GNP. Acoustic surveys have also confirmed the presence of hibernating bats in the winter. The two most commonly captured bats were the little brown myotis (Myotis lucifugus) and the hoary bat (Lasiurus cinereus). GNP may be one of the most substantial migratory routes for hoary bats across North America. Plans include continuing with the inventory phase by surveying additional grid cells using both acoustic and visual techniques, and focusing on long-term monitoring using acoustic sampling and systematic and repeatable counts of little brown bat maternity roosts

Promoting Change within Special Education Teacher Preparation Program: A Collision of Needs

The United States is experiencing a systemic teacher shortage (Sutcher et al., 2016). This trend is not new to the field of special education, which has been experiencing teacher shortages for decades (Boe, 2006; McLeskey & Billingsley, 2008; U.S. Department of Education, 2020). To address these critical shortages of teachers in the field, states have created Alternative Routes to Licensure (ARL) options, which are commonly seen as non-traditional approaches to gaining teaching credentials. Although the disruptive practice of ARL is already in place, the evidence to support its effectiveness is not. This paper explores the experiences of junior faculty members working as agents of change by disrupting one special education department’s ARL program. Emphasis is given to the system supports in place to change the ARL and existing systemic barriers to these changes at the department, college and university levels. Additionally, structures which aided or hindered completing programmatic work from the perspective of the untenured faculty members are also discussed

The Use Of Top-Down Approach In Teaching Listening Through Short Stories

Listening comprehension is the first skill that students should master, because before someone understands and starts to speak, lie or she has to hear sounds, words, or speech pattern. Listening is considered as a difficult language skill since it involves some aspects of the language, for example, vocabulary, understanding the sound, grammar, getting, the mainL_ understandingidea, specific information and reference. The teaching of listening in formal schools is still considered unsuccessful for that it tends to make students boring. Therefore, English teachers should provide more challenging and interesting listening activities. Teaching listening withZ7short stories is said to be one of the way to reduce students boredom and to increase students listening comprehension.For the above reasons, this research was intended to find out whether there was significant improvement of students listening comprehension in short stories after being taught through top - down approach. This research was done in a group pretest posttest design. The population of this research was the eleventh grade in SMA YP UN ILA Bandar Lampung. The sample of this research was XI IPA I and was selected by using random sampling technique. In collecting the data, the researcher administered the pretest, the treatments and posttest. The data was analyzed by using repeated measure t-test. In which the significance was determined by p<0.05. The result of t-test computation showed that (-ratio was higher than t-table (t,>t,.J, that is, (29.330>2.021), it can be concluded that there was a significant improvement of students listening comprehension after being taught short stories through top - down approach. This means that teaching listening through short stories in a top-down approach was applicable to improve sttideiitslistening omprehension ability

The Use of Top-Down Approach in Teaching Listening Through Short Stories

Listening comprehension is the first skill that students should master, because before someone understands and starts to speak, lie or she has to hear sounds, words, or speech pattern. Listening is considered as a difficult language skill since it involves some aspects of the language, for example, vocabulary, understanding the sound, grammar, getting, the mainL_ understandingidea, specific information and reference. The teaching of listening in formal schools is still considered unsuccessful for that it tends to make students boring. Therefore, English teachers should provide more challenging and interesting listening activities. Teaching listening withZ7short stories is said to be one of the way to reduce students boredom and to increase students listening comprehension.For the above reasons, this research was intended to find out whether there was significant improvement of students listening comprehension in short stories after being taught through top - down approach. This research was done in a group pretest posttest design. The population of this research was the eleventh grade in SMA YP UN ILA Bandar Lampung. The sample of this research was XI IPA I and was selected by using random sampling technique. In collecting the data, the researcher administered the pretest, the treatments and posttest. The data was analyzed by using repeated measure t-test. In which the significance was determined by p<0.05. The result of t-test computation showed that (-ratio was higher than t-table (t,>t,.J, that is, (29.330>2.021), it can be concluded that there was a significant improvement of students listening comprehension after being taught short stories through top - down approach. This means that teaching listening through short stories in a top-down approach was applicable to improve sttideiitslistening omprehension ability

Big brother is watching - using digital disease surveillance tools for near real-time forecasting

Abstract for the International Journal of Infectious Diseases 79 (S1) (2019).https://www.ijidonline.com/article/S1201-9712(18)34659-9/abstractPublished versio

Occupational vision care program: Eyecare for the coal mining industry

Occupational vision care program: Eyecare for the coal mining industr

Climate Change Alters Trophic Interactions in Coastal Ecosystems

Understanding the effects of multiple anthropogenic changes on local ecosystems is important for understanding community interactions. Because they lie at the interface between the land and sea coastal ecosystems are often heavily impacted by anthropogenic stressors and environmental change. For example, approximately one third of the anthropogenic CO2 released into the atmosphere is taken up by the ocean, causing reductions in pH and in the amount of bio-available carbonate ions. Simultaneously, we are experiencing increases in sea surface temperatures. These two stressors are impacting coastal ecosystems by altering biodiversity, species phenology and distribution, community composition, and biological invasions. These changes in individual species will undoubtedly affect their trophic interactions, which might be especially important for ecological communities centered around foundation species, which stabilize and provide habitat for a multitude species. Therefore, I asked if ocean acidification and increased sea surface temperatures would impact growth and survival of the foundation species, the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica), change the nature of the trophic interactions between juvenile eastern oysters and predatory mud crabs (Panopeus spp.), and alter coastal community compositions. To examine these questions I setup a 2x4 experimental design where oysters were grown in one of two levels of CO2 (ambient and elevated) and one of four different temperature treatments (0, 1, 2, and 3[degrees]C above ambient). Oysters alone showed decreased survival, shell height, and filtration with increasing temperature. In the presence of mud crabs, more oysters were consumed when grown in elevated CO2 and increased temperature. Elevated CO2 environments increased soft bodied organisms, such as Molgula manhattensis which can compete with oysters for food and settling space, and decreased the presence of organisms that rely on calcium ions. These results illustrate the importance of investigating trophic interactions in multiple stressor environments. These types of studies are an important step for managers attempting to understand and predict the impacts of climate change on important and in some cases economically valuable ecosystems

Report 47: A generic method and software to estimate the transmission advantage of pathogen variants in real-time : SARS-CoV-2 as a case-study

Recent months have demonstrated that emerging variants may set back the global COVID-19 response. The ability to rapidly assess the threat of new variants in real-time is critical for timely optimisation of control strategies. We extend the EpiEstim R package, designed to estimate the time-varying reproduction number (Rt), to estimate in real-time the e ective transmission advantage of a new variant compared to a reference variant. Our method can combine information across multiple locations and over time and was validated using an extensive simulation study, designed to mimic a variety of real-time epidemic contexts. We estimate that the SARS-CoV-2 Alpha variant is 1.46 (95% Credible Interval 1.44-1.47) and 1.29, (95% CrI 1.29-1.30) times more transmissible than the wild type, using data from England and France respectively. We further estimate that Beta and Gamma combined are 1.25 (95% CrI 1.24-1.27) times more transmissible than the wildtype (France data). All results are in line with previous estimates from literature, but could have been obtained earlier and more easily with our o -the-shelf open-source tool. Our tool can be used as an important rst step towards quantifying the threat of new variants in real-time. Given the popularity of EpiEstim, this extension will likely be used widely to monitor the co-circulation and/or emergence of multiple variants of infectious pathogens

Distance statistics in large toroidal maps

We compute a number of distance-dependent universal scaling functions characterizing the distance statistics of large maps of genus one. In particular, we obtain explicitly the probability distribution for the length of the shortest non-contractible loop passing via a random point in the map, and that for the distance between two random points. Our results are derived in the context of bipartite toroidal quadrangulations, using their coding by well-labeled 1-trees, which are maps of genus one with a single face and appropriate integer vertex labels. Within this framework, the distributions above are simply obtained as scaling limits of appropriate generating functions for well-labeled 1-trees, all expressible in terms of a small number of basic scaling functions for well-labeled plane trees.Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, minor corrections, new added reference

Suicide Among Aboriginal People in Canada

This report looks at the complex issues that surround Aboriginal suicide in Canad