Only the Intervenor Cared : A Critical Juncture in the Rise of Dairy CAFOs and Neoliberal Environmental Policy in Wisconsin

Building on scholarship regarding the rise of neoliberalism since the late 1970s and using a comparative-historical methodology, this thesis examines a case study regarding how state governments in the United States have succumbed to neoliberal pressures over time. Specifically, this thesis examines the rapid expansion of concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) in Wisconsin since 1995. As these large CAFOs have grown in size, so have the social and environmental problems related to their use, including pollution of drinking water sources for rural communities. Based on analysis of hundreds of newspaper articles, this thesis finds that that a critical juncture occurred with the demise of the Office of the Public Intervenor, a legally designated adversarial force unique to the state that had been created in the late 1960s as a compromise between conservationists and business interests to monitor state enforcement of environmental regulations, particularly water pollution. Public statements by political leaders from both parties, conservationists, dairy industry executives, and citizens are analyzed around three key time periods: the 1966-67 establishment of the Office of the Public Intervenor, the 1984 defense of its role against a challenge by the Wisconsin Supreme Court, and the 1995 elimination of the Office. In retrospect, the elimination of the public intervenor was a critical juncture necessary to create the conditions that enabled CAFOs to expand without the “burden” of state regulation. Subsequently, through incremental legal changes, Wisconsinites lost access to legal remedies that could curb polluting practices of large CAFOs. This project adds to the growing body of sociolegal literature which aims to understand the state-corporate neoliberal project, particularly how states use law and policy to facilitate the needs of large corporations, often against the will of their own people

Using K.net: A Knowledge Network Product

As we move into the Knowledge Age, enterprises are becoming cognizant of the importance of their intellectual assets as a source of competitive advantage. These intellectual assets include the knowledge, experience, and insights of the enterprises’ employees, customers, suppliers, and consultants. To capture these intellectual assets, enterprises are using computer and information technologies called knowledge networks. Knowledge networks facilitate setting up systems and processes to collect knowledge from individuals and share that knowledge with others in the enterprise. K.net (which stands for Knowledge Networks), a communications software product, will be demonstrated for gathering knowledge useful in supporting a decision making process in business

Examining the Feasibility of Implementing a Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery Bibliotherapy for the Treatment of Psychosocial Distress in Women with Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is the most common cancer diagnosis and the second leading cause of cancer-related death for women in the United States. Clinical depression and anxiety occur frequently within this population. Subclinical symptoms are also common and include increased sense of vulnerability, agitation, and grief as well as fears related to pain, creating a burden for one\u27s family, and death. Due to the variety of negative implications women experience from psychosocial distress, improving quality of life and reducing symptomatology becomes imperative. A plethora of research supports the use of Mindfulness-Based Cancer Recovery (MBCR). Considering the challenges present within traditional psycho-oncological care (e.g., interdisciplinary integration, financial funding, burden of time intensive oncological and psychological treatment, appropriate staffing, etc.), the current study examines the feasibility of implementing an empirically supported psychotherapeutic approach (i.e., MBCR) through an alternative modality of treatment (i.e., guided bibliotherapy). Participants included women with breast cancer who were recruited from an ambulatory oncology clinic. Results shed light on a variety of factors involved in determining feasibility. Implications of acceptability, recruitment capability, demand and data collection, design procedures and implementation, integration, and effectiveness are discussed

Perceiving Personae: Effects of Social Information on Perceptions of TRAP-backing

Studies have shown that perceived macro-social categories like location of origin, age and class can influence listeners’ perceptions of linguistic variables. Other work in sociolinguistics has demonstrated that variables can index multiple social meanings, often associable with personae that are more specific and complex than macro-social categories. This paper brings together these lines of inquiry, testing how persona-based social information influences linguistic expectations in a vowel categorization task. The experiment examines multiple social meanings of one sociolinguistic variable: the backing of the TRAP vowel. By virtue of its patterning in California, TRAP-backing has social meanings related to macro-social Californian location of origin, as well as to Californian social types like the Valley Girl. The feature has separately been associated with professional, formal personae. In a vowel categorization task, listeners categorized continua of ambiguous auditory words as either containing a TRAP vowel (e.g., SACK) or a LOT vowel (e.g., SOCK). Prior to the task, listeners were either told that the speaker was from California (macro-social information), the speaker had ‘been described as’ a Valley Girl, or a Business Professional (persona-based information), or they were not given any speaker information (Baseline). Listeners in both the macro-social and persona-based information conditions were more likely to respond to a given token as TRAP than listeners in the Baseline condition, indicating an expectation of TRAP-backing created by all three social meanings of the feature. The effect was strongest in the Business Professional condition overall, but when the token was particularly backed, the Business Professional effect disappeared, while a strong effect emerged in the Valley Girl condition. These findings demonstrate that persona-based information about a speaker can lead listeners to expect an associated linguistic feature as strongly, if not more strongly, than macro-social information. Crucially, the strength of the effect depends upon the phonetic manifestation of the variable, among other aspects of the speaker voice, listener background, and situational context

What is the Relationship Between Strategies Emergent Readers

The research done in this study is looking at emergent readers\u27 metacognitive awareness of reading strategies. This study was largely influenced by Catherine Compton-Lilly\u27s study, Sounding out : A pervasive cultural model of reading. This study brought to my attention that emergent readers tend to say that they just sound out words when the word is unknown. However, emergent readers are implementing a variety of strategies when reading. The students involved in the research all received extra reading support outside of their regular classroom. The research was conducted in the small reading groups that took place during their extra reading support time. The participating students were asked individually before reading, what reading strategies they used when they come to a word that they do not know when reading. After the students were asked this question they read a book at their independent or instructional reading level. While the student was reading aloud the researcher conducted a running record and took anecdotal notes on the students\u27 behaviors. The running record and anecdotal notes allowed the researcher to note the strategies that the students were implementing while reading. When the student had finished reading and used a strategy different from the strategies stated prior to reading the researcher brought the student to that point in the reading and asked, what did you do here to figure out this word? The students were brought back to this point to show them that they are using different strategies when reading. The results show that students\u27 awareness of the reading strategies they use is not equivalent to the strategies they actually use. The participants in the study used more strategies than they said they use. All most all of the participants named one of the strategies that they use while reading during the prior to reading question

Civil War Pharmacy: A History of Drugs, Drug Supply and Provision, and Therapeutics for the Union and Confederacy

Drug traffic Book explores medical aspect of war Michael Flannery\u27s in-depth study of pharmacy and the pharmaceutical industry during the Civil War will fast become the definitive work on this subject. It is an invaluable book for those interested in medicine of the Civil...

Bleeding Blue and Gray: Civil War Surgery and the Evolution of American Medicine

Military medicine Hospitals shaped the creation of a public health system The American Civil War is one of the most widely written about periods of America\u27s history. The combat, suffering, and death are glorified through the written accounts of the participants and historians. Yet, as the author ...

J. Franklin Dyer\u27s The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon

Healing Hands Letters illuminate doctor\u27s life on the front This volume is a compilation of letters written by Jonah Franklin Dyer to his wife, Maria, while he served as a Union surgeon. The letters cover the period from July 1861 to August 1864. They provide the reader with a ...

Collaborative Decision Support Software for the 21st Century

Information-age organizations require information access within organizations and across organizational boundaries for collective decision making. WebIQ, a web-based software technology designed to support decision-making in information-age organizations, will be demonstrated

Medical Malpractice: From Drunkenness To Desertion, Some Union Doctors Did More Than Surgery

Tarnished Scalpels tells the story of 50 Union doctors who, for various reasons, faced military court-martials, some for misdeeds that stagger the imagination. Society of Civil War Surgeons members Thomas P. Lowry, author of The Story the Soldiers Wouldn\u27t Tell and Tarnished Eagles...