The Off-Season: Masculinities, Rurality, & Family Ties in Alaska Commercial Fishermen

The purpose of this study is to explore the intersections of masculinity, rurality, the family, and economics through the experiences of commercial fishermen in Alaska. Understanding masculinity as plural and the rural space as a sphere in which individuals operate, this study examines the relationship between the masculine rural and the rural masculine and how it pertains to commercial fishermen. I focus on the discourse already present about Alaska and commercial fishermen and combine this approach with notions of cultural and economic capital, as well as the local ecological knowledge (LEK). The fishermen describe their experiences in the industry as ones that are rooted in family influence and economic gain, while also believing that, in order to make money, a “true fisherman” needs to be able to learn fast and endure what the industry throws at them. This study adds to the body of knowledge already put forth about rural masculinities and offers a different approach to understanding a subculture that is rarely looked at today

Ponte Las Pilas: Hidden Narratives and Latinidad at Macalester College

Latinxs in higher education, while numerous, still lag behind all major racial groups in terms of graduation. Why is that? It is society’s hope that education will provide equal opportunity and a path out of poverty, but are schools really providing equal opportunities for attainment or are they simply reproducing inequalities in society? To what extent does this idea, if at all, exist even at liberal and multiculturally focused institutions like Macalester? I ask first generation Latinx alumni to recount their college experiences at Mac in order understand how their narratives compared to those promoted in college advertisements on the official website and Youtube account. What emerges from interviews with alumni are intense feelings of isolation based on not only racial but also class differences. It seems that colleges and universities do a lot to bring racial and economic minorities onto their campuses but often lack a community to support them. Now the question is, what needs to change in order for higher education to become truly accessible

The non-Gaussian Cold Spot in WMAP: significance, morphology and foreground contribution

The non--Gaussian cold spot in the 1-year WMAP data, described in Vielva et al. and Cruz et al., is analysed in detail in the present paper. First of all, we perform a more rigorous calculation of the significance of the non-zero kurtosis detected in WMAP maps by Vielva et al. in wavelet space, mainly generated by the Spot. We confirm the robustness of that detection, since the probability of obtaining this deviation by chance is 0.69%. Afterwards, the morphology of the Spot is studied by applying Spherical Mexican Hat Wavelets with different ellipticities. The shape of the Spot is found to be almost circular. Finally, we discuss if the observed non-Gaussianity in wavelet space can arise from bad subtracted foreground residues in the WMAP maps. We show that the flat frequency dependence of the Spot cannot be explained by a thermal Sunyaev-Zeldovich effect. Based on our present knowledge of Galactic foreground emissions, we conclude that the significance of our detection is not affected by Galactic residues in the region of the Spot. Considering different Galactic foreground estimates, the probability of finding such a big cold spot in Gaussian simulations is always below 1%.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figures, minor changes, accpeted in MNRA

Orientation, sphericity and roundness evaluation of particles using alternative 3D representations

Sphericity and roundness indices have been used mainly in geology to analyze the shape of particles. In this paper, geometric methods are proposed as an alternative to evaluate the orientation, sphericity and roundness indices of 3D objects. In contrast to previous works based on digital images, which use the voxel model, we represent the particles with the Extreme Vertices Model, a very concise representation for binary volumes. We define the orientation with three mutually orthogonal unit vectors. Then, some sphericity indices based on length measurement of the three representative axes of the particle can be computed. In addition, we propose a ray-casting-like approach to evaluate a 3D roundness index. This method provides roundness measurements that are highly correlated with those provided by the Krumbein's chart and other previous approach. Finally, as an example we apply the presented methods to analyze the sphericity and roundness of a real silica nano dataset.Postprint (published version

Service scheduling in garden maintenance

Neoturf is a Portuguese company working in the area of project, building and garden’s maintenance. Neoturf would like to have a procedure for scheduling and routing efficiently the clients from garden maintenance services. The company has two teams available during the whole year and an additional team during summer to handle all the maintenance jobs. Each team consists of two or three employees with a vehicle fully equipped with the tools that allow to carry out every kind of maintenance service. In the beginning of each year, the number and frequency of maintenance interventions to conduct during the year, on each client, are accorded. Each client is assigned to the same team and, usually, time windows are established so that visits to the client should occur only within these periods. As the Neoturf costumers’ are geographically spread over a wide region, the total distance on visiting clients is a factor that has a heavy weight on the costs of the company. Neoturf is concerned with reducing these costs, while satisfying the agreements with the clients

Dactylorhiza elata, Stately Dactylorhiza

Mediterranean regional assessment: Near Threatened (NT) The species is found from southwestern Europe and northwestern Africa. In two countries within the Mediterranean distribution (France and Portugal) populations or habitat of this species have declined by more than 30% over three generations. In another two countries (Algeria and Morocco) a similar decline is suspected but cannot yet be confirmed, and in Spain populations appear to be relatively abundant however there is no information on population trends. Elsewhere the species is known only from singlesites in Sardinia and Tunisia. whilst the extent of occurrence is very large, the area of occupancy (AOO) is possibly restricted however distribution data are inadequate to confirm the AOO. Therefore whilst the rate of decline cannot be measured throughout the range of the species, the Mediterranean population decline is confirmed, it is ongoing and is not reversible, consequently this species is close to classification as Vulnerable (A2c and A4c). Further to this, if monitoring data become available to provide an indication of population trends in Spain and these show that it is in decline then it is clear that the species should be considered threatened at both the Mediterranean and global scales. This species is therefore classed as Near Threatened, approaching Vulnerable (A2c+4c)