Environmental Beliefs and Concern about Animal Welfare: Exploring the Connections

An online survey examined environmental beliefs and concern about animal welfare among 105 social work students in the U.S.- Mexico border region. Environmental beliefs were measured using items from the revised New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) Scale (Dunlap, Van Liere, Mertig, & Jones, 2000). Higher concern about animal welfare was significantly related to three dimensions of the revised NEP Scale: (1) belief in the fragility of nature\u27s balance, (2) belief in the possibility ofan ecological crisis, and (3) rejection of the notion that humans have a right to dominate nature (anti-anthropocentrism). The findings suggest that by making explicit connections between the needs of the natural environment, animals, and people, social work educators may foster a broader ecological worldview that encompasses the well-being of all species and ecosystems

Comparison of Sweet Corn Vigor with Ions and Sugars in Seed Leachate of Five Isolene Pairs with Two Endosperm Types

Supersweet corn contains more sugar and less starch than traditional sweet corn which increases the sweetness of the kernel. Supersweet corn has increased in consumer popularity due to its sweeter flavor and ability to retain this sweeter flavor longer than traditional sweet corn. Two sweet corn (Zea mays L. var. rugosa) endosperm types (traditional and shrunken-2) are popular with consumers. The problem growers face with supersweet cultivars (shrunken-2) is poor seed vigor as shown by low field emergence and non-uniform stands. Field emergence of plants was compared to laboratory germination for 5 sweet corn isoline pairs (genetically identical except for 1 allele or modifying allele), i.e. C68, Ia5125, Ia453, Il442a and Oh43 with each pair having 2 endosperm types, shrunken-2 (sh2) and traditional (su1). Field studies evaluated plant height, fresh weight, dry weight, leaf area and number of leaves. Ions, total sugars and individual sugars in leachate from sweet corn seeds soaked in water were evaluated for the same isoline pairs. These evaluations were performed using electrical conductivity (ion leakage), spectrophotometry (total sugars) and high pressure liquid chromatography (sucrose, fructose and glucose). Emergence and germination studies for sh2 and su1 endosperm types were compared to indicate seed vigor. Ions and sugars in seed leachate were examined for an association with seed vigor. Traditional sweet corn had higher emergence and in most cases, higher germination than sh2 for each isoline. Shrunken-2 isolines leaked the same or more ions than su1 isolines. The isolines that leaked more ions had lower laboratory germination and field emergence. Shrunken-2 isolines leaked more total sugars (mg/g seed) than sul isolines. The poorest germinating and emerging isoline also leaked the most sugars. Analysis of individual sugars (sucrose, fructose, glucose) revealed that sh2 leaked the same or more than su1. Differences between isolines showed the lowest field emerging and laboratory germinating isoline leaked more or the same amount of individual sugars. For individual sugars (sucrose, fructose and glucose) measured, more fructose leaked than sucrose or glucose. Of parameters measured, total sugars in leachate using spectrophotometry best predicted field emergence and laboratory germination between endosperm types and isolines except for germination of isoline Oh43. Ion leakage and individual sugars in leachate also showed trends of association with emergence and germination in isolines, but not as closely paralleled as total sugars between endosperm types (sh2 and su1)

Aspirations into action : navigating structures for community engagement at the University of Louisville.

This dissertation analyzes the affordances of university structures based on how they value and support community engagement, focusing on common issues for community-engaged scholars. In this case study of the University of Louisville as an institution developing stronger structures for community engagement, I show that current efforts represent important starting points for how institutions support engagement, but I argue that they, and scholarly discussion about them, need to be deepened to meet the needs of engaged scholars. Toward that end, utilizing an institutional critique methodology informed by scholarship in institutional ethnography, I combine analysis of university policies and documents with stakeholder interviews in order to explore the lived realities of these policies. My findings detail how the complexities of three oft-cited challenges faced by engaged scholars—promotion and tenure, learning opportunities, and transdisciplinary projects—are often elided in scholarship, doing scholars and administrators a disservice by misrepresenting how to develop what institutional structures for engagement at a university. Through this study, I add dimension to the relatively flattened suggestions for solving the complicated problems of institutional structures for engagement by making visible a deep professionalization structure beyond just promotion and tenure policy that devalues engaged research over the course of a scholar\u27s career (Chapter 2); showing how individual scholars gain greater understanding of engaged research through community projects that combine meta and tacit learning (Chapter 3); and exploring how organizational infrastructure for transdisciplinary research can both sponsor individual projects and build institution-wide buy-in for community engagement (Chapter 4). Altogether, I argue that making the complications of institutional structures more visible will ease their navigability for emerging scholars interested in pursuing engaged research and help established scholars locate institutional changes that can be made to better support engaged scholarship

Review: Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies and Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning from Bilingual After- School Programs by Steven Alvarez

Steven Alvarez’s commitment to understanding the complex challenges faced by emerging bilingual (or multilingual) students and their families is easily seen through his two recently published books, Brokering Tareas: Mexican Immigrant Families Translanguaging Homework Literacies (2017a) and Community Literacies en Confianza: Learning from Bilingual After-School Programs (2017b). Alvarez’s dual studies of after-school programs in New York City and Lexington, Kentucky provide deep insight into the educational challenges emerging bilingual students face in and out of the classroom, as well as how to form relationships between students, parents, teachers, and other mentors that can help students succeed

Mass and spring dimer Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou nanopterons with exponentially small, nonvanishing ripples

We study traveling waves in mass and spring dimer Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) lattices in the long wave limit. Such lattices are known to possess nanopteron traveling waves in relative displacement coordinates. These nanopteron profiles consist of the superposition of an exponentially localized "core," which is close to a KdV solitary wave, and a periodic "ripple," whose amplitude is small beyond all algebraic orders of the long wave parameter, although a zero amplitude is not precluded. Here we deploy techniques of spatial dynamics, inspired by results of Iooss and Kirchg\"{a}ssner, Iooss and James, and Venney and Zimmer, to construct mass and spring dimer nanopterons whose ripples are both exponentially small and also nonvanishing. We first obtain "growing front" traveling waves in the original position coordinates and then pass to relative displacement. To study position, we recast its traveling wave problem as a first-order equation on an infinite-dimensional Banach space; then we develop hypotheses that, when met, allow us to reduce such a first-order problem to one solved by Lombardi. A key part of our analysis is then the passage back from the reduced problem to the original one. Our hypotheses free us from working strictly with lattices but are easily checked for FPUT mass and spring dimers. We also give a detailed exposition and reinterpretation of Lombardi's methods, to illustrate how our hypotheses work in concert with his techniques, and we provide a dialogue with prior methods of constructing FPUT nanopterons, to expose similarities and differences with the present approach

Micropterons, Nanopterons and Solitary Wave Solutions to the Diatomic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou Problem

We use a specialized boundary-value problem solver for mixed-type functional differential equations to numerically examine the landscape of traveling wave solutions to the diatomic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) problem. By using a continuation approach, we are able to uncover the relationship between the branches of micropterons and nanopterons that have been rigorously constructed recently in various limiting regimes. We show that the associated surfaces are connected together in a nontrivial fashion and illustrate the key role that solitary waves play in the branch points. Finally, we numerically show that the diatomic solitary waves are stable under the full dynamics of the FPUT system