Handcuffing the Vote: Diluting Minority Voting Power Through Prison Gerrymandering and Felon Disenfranchisement

For the purposes of legislative redistricting, Texas counts prison populations at the address of the prison in which they are incarcerated at the time of the census, rather than their home prior to incarceration—regardless of whether the prisoners themselves maintain a residence in their home communities and intend to return home after incarceration. This deprives those home communities of full representation in the redistricting process. Combined with Texas’s felon disenfranchisement laws, this also results in arbitrarily bolstering the representational power of some Texans on the backs of other Texans who themselves are unable to vote. All of this takes place against the backdrop of a long history of unconstitutional racial discrimination by the State of Texas and a broken criminal justice system. Some states have taken proactive policy measures to remedy the systemic problem of prison gerrymandering, and changing societal values might pave the way for new legal challenges to combat these injustices

Estimating stable isotope turnover rates of epidermal mucus and dorsal muscle for an omnivorous fish using a diet-switch experiment

© 2018, The Author(s). Stable isotope (SI) analysis studies rely on knowledge of isotopic turnover rates and trophic-step discrimination factors. Epidermal mucus (‘mucus’) potentially provides an alternative SI ‘tissue’ to dorsal muscle that can be collected non-invasively and non-destructively. Here, a diet-switch experiment using the omnivorous fish Cyprinus carpio and plant- and fish-based formulated feeds compared SI data between mucus and muscle, including their isotopic discrimination factors and turnover rates (as functions of time T and mass G, at isotopic half-life (50) and equilibrium (95)). Mucus isotope data differed significantly and predictively from muscle data. The fastest δ13C turnover rate was for mucus in fish on the plant-based diet (T50: 17 days, T95: 74 days; G50: 1.08(BM), G95: 1.40(BM)). Muscle turnover rates were longer for the same fish (T50: 44 days, T95: 190 days; G50: 1.13(BM), G95: 1.68(BM)). Longer half-lives resulted in both tissues from the fish-based diet. δ13C discrimination factors varied by diet and tissue (plant-based: 3.11–3.28‰; fishmeal: 1.28–2.13‰). Mucus SI data did not differ between live and frozen fish. These results suggest that mucus SI half-lives provide comparable data to muscle, and can be used as a non-destructive alternative tissue in fish-based SI studies

Strategies to Reduce Agricultural Nonpoint Source Pollution in the Boise Watershed

Nitrogen and phosphorous nonpoint source pollutants are a serious concern in the Boise River as they contribute to increased algae blooms, decreased fish populations and an overall degradation of river water quality. This research focuses on agricultural nonpoint pollution and the effectiveness of best management practice (BMP) strategies. The costs, benefits and overall effectiveness of three BMPs are examined, based on the most common crops grown in the Boise River area, and an exploration of why these BMPs are not being widely used on local cropland is presented. A nutrient trading system is one viable way to incentivize the use of BMPs, however such a system has been proposed for the Boise River in 1998 but it hasn’t been implemented. With a nutrient trading system in place, a comprehensive manual that includes costs, benefits, and BMP effectiveness will assist farmers in making decisions regarding their effluent trading, and will thus allow local farmers and the agencies governing the nutrient trading program to make a measurable difference in decreasing nonpoint pollution in the Boise River

Sleep Spindles and Fragmented Sleep as Prodromal Markers in a Preclinical Model of LRRK2-G2019S Parkinson's Disease

Sleep disturbances co-occur with and precede the onset of motor symptoms in Parkinson's disease (PD). We evaluated sleep fragmentation and thalamocortical sleep spindles in mice expressing the p.G2019S mutation of the leucine-rich repeat kinase 2 (LRRK2) gene, one of the most common genetic forms of PD. Thalamocortical sleep spindles are oscillatory events that occur during slow-wave sleep that are involved in memory consolidation. We acquired data from electrocorticography, sleep behavioral measures, and a rotarod-based motor enrichment task in 28 LRRK2-G2019S knock-in mice and 27 wild-type controls (8-10 month-old males). Sleep was more fragmented in LRRK2-G2019S mice; sleep bouts were shorter and more numerous, even though total sleep time was similar to controls. LRRK2-G2019S animals expressed more sleep spindles, and individual spindles were longer in duration than in controls. We then chronically administered the LRRK2-inhibitor MLi-2 in-diet to n = 12 LRRK2-G2019S and n = 15 wild-type mice for a within-subject analysis of the effects of kinase inhibition on sleep behavior and physiology. Treatment with MLi-2 did not impact these measures. The data indicate that the LRRK2-G2019S mutation could lead to reduced sleep quality and altered sleep spindle physiology. This suggests that sleep spindles in LRRK2-G2019S animals could serve as biomarkers for underlying alterations in sleep networks resulting from the LRRK2-G2019S mutation, and further evaluation in human LRRK2-G2019S carriers is therefore warranted.Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

A meta-analysis of the impact of drones on birds

Data archive for raw data and tables from "A meta-analysis of the impact of drones on birds", Frontiers in Ecology and the Environmen

The Citizen Artist : 20 Years of Art in the Public Arena : An Anthology from High Performance Magazine 1978-1998, Vol. I

An anthology of articles from High Performance Magazine published between 1978 and 1998, comprised mainly of interviews with artists grouped under three themes: the art/life experiment, the artist as activist, and the artist as citizen. Durland claims the groupings reflect the evolution of the magazine’s editorial concerns, from performance art to activist art to community-based art. Each text, he notes, is linked by the desire to reach beyond the traditional forms, content, and context of the arts to engage with a broader community. Biographical notes. Bibl. 4 p

The network architecture of human capital : a relational identity perspective

Managing constellations of employee relationships is a core competency in knowledge-based organizations. It is timely, then, that human resource management (HRM) scholars and practitioners are adopting an increasingly relational view of HR. Whereas this burgeoning stream of research predominantly positions relationships as pathways for the transmission of resources, we shift attention by spotlighting that the interplay between HR practices and informal relationships perforate deeper than resource flows; they also influence how individuals view and define themselves in the context of their dyadic and collective relationships. Moreover, because HR practices routinely involve human capital movement into, within, and out of the organization, these practices have implications for the network architecture of organizations. We integrate the social network perspective (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011) with the theory of relational identity (Sluss & Ashforth, 2007) to present a relational theory of HRM that informs how modifications to internal social structures stimulated by HR practices can influence individual outcomes by transforming individuals’ self-concepts as relationships are gained, altered, and lost