Preparing for Uncertainty: Exploring Access to Higher Education in Dzaleka Refugee Camp, Malawi

Against a backdrop of increasingly protracted refugee situations worldwide and on the continent of Africa in particular, education is imperative to facilitate the ability of displaced persons to voice their concerns and ambitions. Drawing on fieldwork carried out in Dzaleka Refugee camp in Malawi during Summer 2013, this thesis adopts an Afro-centered approach to studying the relationship between education and development. Utilizing oral histories and interviews, it explores educational access, the displacement of young people and their desire for higher education. This desire is linked to first, a self-realization that is expressed as control over their lives in a context of heightened uncertainty and second, an increased potential to contribute to the current betterment of their own and their families’ lives. Despite increasingly protracted situations for refugees and mixed migrants in Malawi, it is extremely difficult to find cartographic evidence of Dzaleka’s existence amongst other documentation of forced migration in the region. This thesis works collaboratively with refugee youth narrators to bring visibility to the place they live. Moreover, this work contributes to the view that those described as refugees in protracted refugee situations can contribute to a discursive and structural shift by ‘self-authoring’ their own development. Access to higher education is recognized as one of the key ways to enable and support this shift

The dissociation of NO–Ar(A) from around threshold to 200 cm−1 above threshold

We report an investigation of the dissociation of A state NO–Ar at energies from 23 cm−1 below the dissociation energy to 200 cm−1 above. The NO product rotational distributions show population in states that are not accessible with the energy available for excitation from the NO ground state. This effect is observed at photon energies from below the dissociation energy up to approximately 100 cm−1 above it. Translational energy distributions, extracted from velocity map images of individual rotational levels of the NO product, reveal contributions from excitation of high energy NO–Ar X states at all the excess energies probed, although this diminishes with increasing photon energy and is quite small at 200 cm−1, the highest energy studied. These translational energy distributions show that there are contributions arising from population in vibrational levels up to the X state dissociation energy. We propose that the reason such sparsely populated levels contribute to the observed dissociation is a considerable increase in the transition moment, via the Franck–Condon factor associated with these highly excited states, which arises because of the quite different geometries in the NO–Ar X and A states. This effect is likely to arise in other systems with similarly large geometry changes

The binding energies of NO–Rg (Rg = He, Ne, Ar) determined by velocity map imaging

We report velocity map imaging measurements of the binding energies, D0, of NO–Rg (Rg = He, Ne, Ar) complexes. The X state binding energies determined are 3.0 ± 1.8, 28.6 ± 1.7, and 93.5 ± 0.9 cm−1 for NO–He, –Ne, and –Ar, respectively. These values compare reasonably well with ab initio calculations. Because the A–X transitions were unable to be observed for NO–He and NO–Ne, values for the binding energies in the A state of these complexes have not been determined. Based on our X state value and the reported A–X origin band position, the A state binding energy for NO–Ar was determined to be 50.6 ± 0.9 cm−1

Ethical Climate, Organizational Commitment, and Job Satisfaction of Full-Time University Faculty Members

Excerpt:The purpose of this quantitative study was to better understand the relationship of perceived ethical climate on the organizational commitment and job satisfaction of full time faculty members in institutions of higher education

Soil carbon storage and sequestration in Vermont Agriculture

In 2021, The State of Soil Health (SOSH) project measured indicators of soil health on 221 farm fields across the state of Vermont through a collaborative effort among many organizations. Soil carbon stocks to 30 cm depth were assessed on 191 of those fields. In this brief we share a summary of this new soil carbon stock data alongside data from a national assessment of soil carbon stocks performed by the NRCS from 2010 and highlight its relevance to current policy conversations within the state of Vermont. Key Ideas The protection of existing soil carbon stocks and support for increased carbon sequestration align with both environmental and agricultural goals. A collaborative effort to collect and share soil health information in 2021 provides needed state scale data on soil health and soil carbon in Vermont’s agricultural landscapes. Northeastern soils and climate are naturally conducive to high levels of soil carbon. When compared regionally and nationally, Vermont’s agricultural soil carbon levels are high. An average of 86 MT carbon per hectare and 4.3% organic matter was observed. A wide range in soil health scores and soil carbon levels observed in soil samples showed both that some fields have high levels of carbon storage, and many fields had low carbon levels indicating there are opportunities to further sink more carbon. Long term studies in Vermont have documented agricultural soil carbon sequestration rates at between 0.39 and 6.43 MT Carbon per hectare per year. That’s equivalent to a range of 1.4 to 23.6 MT CO2 per hectare per year. Increases in soil carbon are possible on Vermont farms, and can complement other strategies to reduce concentrations of atmospheric greenhouse gasses. The permanence of soil carbon in our region is linked to agricultural economics, farmer capacity and capability. Permanence can be addressed in part through support of Extension technical assistance, policy and conservation incentive program design. Policy tools can help protect the high soil carbon stocks in Vermont. Incentives to maintain high levels of soil carbon for farmers, such as cost-shares or payment- for-ecosystem services programs, should be considered by policy makers. Additional research on common and innovative soil management strategies and their influence on soil carbon sequestration in Vermont agriculture is needed. Soil carbon changes are only one part of the whole farm carbon balance, and more research is needed to assess how soil carbon changes influence climate change mitigation compared to other interventions on farms in Vermont

Seascape Genetics: A Coupled Oceanographic-Genetic Model Predicts Population Structure of Caribbean Corals

SummaryPopulation genetics is a powerful tool for measuring important larval connections between marine populations [1–4]. Similarly, oceanographic models based on environmental data can simulate particle movements in ocean currents and make quantitative estimates of larval connections between populations possible [5–9]. However, these two powerful approaches have remained disconnected because no general models currently provide a means of directly comparing dispersal predictions with empirical genetic data (except, see [10]). In addition, previous genetic models have considered relatively simple dispersal scenarios that are often unrealistic for marine larvae [11–15], and recent landscape genetic models have yet to be applied in a marine context [16–20]. We have developed a genetic model that uses connectivity estimates from oceanographic models to predict genetic patterns resulting from larval dispersal in a Caribbean coral. We then compare the predictions to empirical data for threatened staghorn corals. Our coupled oceanographic-genetic model predicts many of the patterns observed in this and other empirical datasets; such patterns include the isolation of the Bahamas and an east-west divergence near Puerto Rico [3, 21–23]. This new approach provides both a valuable tool for predicting genetic structure in marine populations and a means of explicitly testing these predictions with empirical data (Figure 1)

Experimental study using multiple strains of prion disease in cattle reveals an inverse relationship between incubation time and misfolded prion accumulation, neuroinflammation and autophagy

Proteinopathies result from aberrant folding and accumulation of specific proteins. Currently, there is a lack of knowledge about the factors that influence disease progression making this a key challenge for the development of therapies for proteinopathies. Due to the similarities between transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs) and other protein misfolding diseases, TSEs can be used to understand other proteinopathies. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) is a TSE that occurs in cattle and can be subdivided into three strains: classical BSE, and atypical BSEs (H-type and L-type) that have shorter incubation periods. The NLRP3 inflammasome is a critical component of the innate immune system that leads to release of IL-1β (Interlukin-1β). Macroautophagy is an intracellular mechanism that plays an essential role in protein clearance. In this study, we use the retina as a model to investigate the relationship between disease incubation period, prion protein (PrPSc) accumulation, neuroinflammation, and changes in macroautophagy. We demonstrate that atypical BSEs present with increased PrPSc accumulation and neuroinflammation, and decreased autophagy. Our work suggests a relationship between disease time course, neuroinflammation, and the autophagic stress response. This work may help identify novel therapeutic biomarkers that can delay or prevent the progression of proteinopathies