Towards 2030: Shortcomings and Solutions in Food Loss and Waste Reduction Policy

This Note analyses the growing problems with food consumption and waste with regard to issues of hunger and environmental repercussions. Friedman first analyses the global food waste problem and how U.S. policies may be adding to the problem within the country. The Author relates these U.S. policies to those promulgated by the United Nations, those in Europe, and those at state and local levels. The Note argues the best approach toward addressing these problems will be a dual federal and state/local policy approach, including such methods as broadening USDA policies on grades and standards, creating tax incentives, and diverting local food waste from landfills

The inclusion problem for simple languages

AbstractA deterministic pushdown acceptor is called a simple machine when it is restricted to have only one state, operate in real-time, and accept by empty store. While the existence of an effective procedure for deciding equivalence of languages accepted by these simple machines is well-known, it is shown that this family is powerful enough to have an undecidable inclusion problem. It follows that the inclusion problems for the LL(k) languages and the free monadic recursion schemes that do not use an identity function are also undecidable

Microevolution of the oxidative stress response: organismal and transcriptomic effects of peroxide exposure in the starlet sea anemone Nematostella vectensis

The starlet sea anemone, Nematostella vectensis (phylum Cnidaria, class Anthozoa), inhabits tidal marshes along the Atlantic coast of North America. These shallow coastal habitats are subject to extreme environmental variability, including fluctuating levels of reactive oxygen species (ROS). High ROS concentrations can be cytotoxic and lead to oxidative stress. Given the importance of tidal marshes for marine biodiversity and their susceptibility to oxidative stress, it is important to study how resident organisms counteract oxidative stress. N. vectensis is an excellent model system for addressing the evolution of oxidative stress mechanisms because (1) this anemone exhibits tolerance to a variety of environmental stressors, (2) there is clear evidence of local adaptation to stress in different populations and sub-populations, and (3) protein-coding polymorphisms have been identified, some in proteins that are implicated in stress response. I exposed fifteen different clone lines of N. vectensis collected from four estuaries to biologically relevant levels of hydrogen peroxide. Pronounced differences are apparent between clone lines collected from Meadowlands, NJ, Baruch, SC, and Kingsport, NS, as well as among twelve clones collected at a single Cape Cod marsh. This is the first study that demonstrates intraspecific variation in the oxidative stress response of N. vectensis. To understand how the peroxide response of these clones might differ at the level of gene expression, I sequenced the transcriptomes of 7 clone lines under control conditions and when exposed to survivable levels of peroxide for 24 h. I found survivable peroxide exposure induces robust and repeatable changes in gene expression, including the up-regulation of genes shown to be associated with cellular responses to oxidative stress, thermal stress, and UV stress, and down-regulation of genes that promote generation of ROS, including the enzymes involved in oxidative phosphorylation. Additionally, I identified pronounced differences in the peroxide-induced transcriptional profiles between genets of N. vectensis. The existence of a conserved oxidative stress response has major implications for studies on how other cnidarians, particularly corals, will withstand the impacts of climate change. Indeed, the proximal cause of coral bleaching--the major threat to corals worldwide--is oxidative stress

Reentry for registered sex offenders: Navigating stigma post-release

Registered sex offenders (RSOs) experience extreme stigmatization and monitoring even after they are released from incarceration. This is due, in part, to sex offender registries which perpetuate high levels of stigma and can contribute to false narratives about reoffending, victimization, and the homogeneity of sex offenders. As a result of societal level stigma, RSOs often struggle to locate and maintain employment, secure suitable housing, and establish positive, prosocial relationships. This current study utilized a qualitative approach using in-depth interviews with eight RSOs to explore how offenders experience and navigate this stigma during reentry. Findings support the notion that RSOs experience and anticipate high levels of stigma which contributes to a self-perception of the sex offender status as a master label for the offender himself. Participants also illuminated stigma-management techniques of preventative telling and withdrawal as ways of coping with this and identified experiences that helped them adapt to their marginalization

Employment Assistance and Offender Desistance: An Evaluation of Recidivism in a Faith-based Re-entry Program

Recently released criminal offenders are generally subjected to heavy stigma as they reenter society which is compounded by the general isolation that many feel upon release. Because of these difficulties, re-entry programs can be an effective and prosocial way for ex-offenders to reintegrate back into the community and workforce. This project was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a local faith-based, non-profit re-entry program in Duval County between the years 2015 and 2019. Prisoners of Christ (POC) services both low and high-risk offenders through their employment assistance and residential housing programs. We conducted quantitative research on POC participants utilizing rearrest data from the Florida Department of Corrections and Duval County Jail databases (N = 546). Our quantitative methods included a Chi-Square Test of Independence to determine if there was a significant difference between the employed and unemployed groups on the outcome of rearrest. Our findings supported a statistically significant difference between groups (p = 0.0496), therefore we continued to evaluate the strength of the correlation between employment and rearrest through the Phi test. Our results indicated a weak correlation ( supporting our theoretical framework of employment as a desistance signal. Subsequently, we conducted qualitative interviews with “successful desisters” to better understand the phenomenology of the desistance process through Prisoners of Christ participants. Results indicated an importance of internal change, prosocial ties, and stable employment. Future research is recommended to determine if there are specific aspects of employment that increase a person\u27s likelihood of desisting from crime such as type of work and pay scale

Employment and Recidivism: An Analysis of a Faith-based Reentry Program

Project of Merit Winner Recently released criminal offenders are generally subjected to heavy stigma as they reenter society which is compounded by the general isolation that many feel upon release. Because of these difficulties, re-entry programs can be an effective, prosocial way for ex-offenders to reintegrate back into the community and workforce. This project was designed to evaluate the effectiveness of a local faith-based, non-profit re-entry program in Duval County between 2015 and 2019. Prisoners of Christ (POC) services both low and high-risk offenders through their employment assistance and residential housing programs. We conducted quantitative research on POC participants utilizing rearrest data from the Florida Department of Corrections and Duval County Jail databases (N = 546). Our quantitative methods included a Chi-Square Test of Independence to determine if there was a significant difference between the employed and unemployed groups on the outcome of rearrest. Our findings supported a statistically significant difference between groups (p = 0.0496), therefore we continued to evaluate the strength of the correlation between employment and rearrest through the Phi test. Our results indicated a weak correlation (φ=0.0839) supporting our theoretical framework of employment as a desistance signal. Subsequently, we conducted qualitative interviews with “successful desisters” to better understand the phenomenology of the desistance process through POC participants. Results indicated an importance of internal change, prosocial ties, and stable employment. Future research is recommended to determine if there are specific aspects of employment that increase a person’s likelihood of desisting from crime such as type of work and pay scale

"Let people tell their stories their own way": Tristram Shandy as Novel, Provocation, Remix

In the fall of 2019 I taught my eighteenth-century novel course as an exercise in slow reading, taking a tactic I had used before: putting a canonical work of fiction into the context of the other voices in the literary marketplace, and the circumstances of its making. For such a course, Tristram Shandy is an ideal central text. It was published over nearly a decade, among other significant literary innovations (Millennium Hall, The Castle of Otranto, The Female American) and important world-shaping events. Like all my courses, this class was taught in an active learning classroom connected to our library, with a foot in both the world of the digital and our special collections holdings. Thus, my goal was to provide meaningful experiences in both realms. I (roughly) treated each week in the semester as a “year in the life” of Sterne and Shandy. We read the novel as it was first encountered by its readers: generally, two volumes in a year, with intermittent years where no volume appeared at all. In those moments of publication “silence” we read other items available to readers, including the wealth of responses, parodies, and continuations of Shandy. Because this class is officially an introduction to the “eighteenth century novel,” we also read examples of other threads (to use Spacks’ term) of the novel tradition: the philosophical tale Rasselas (1759), the protofeminist utopia Millennium Hall (1762), the Gothic The Castle of Otranto (1764), and the Robinsonade The Female American (1767). In the lead up to the final volume, we also read Ignatius Sancho’s correspondence with Sterne encouraging him to have explicit abolitionist messaging in that volume, and did leap ahead to include Cugoano’s Thought and Sentiments (1787) so as to provide a fuller grounding of what the movement would become shortly thereafter

Afterword: Novel Knowledge, or Cleansing Dirty Data: Toward Open-Source Histories of the Novel

This afterword discusses the most important, most under-rewarded, and most unsexy aspect of data visualization: the production and use of reliable underlying data. Starting from the premise that visualizations are only as good as their underlying evidentiary base, Freidman addresses the contributions of digital projects that have laid the foundation for such practices, including massive multi-institution projects like Orlando, mid-sized projects like The Early Novels Database (END), and the author’s own small-scale project, Manuscript Fiction in the Age of Print (MFAP). Following this assessment, the author proposes a set of guidelines for best practices in creating new data so that amendable, transformable visualizations can be produced, built on collective knowledge

The End(s) of Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison

Many innovations in Samuel Richardson's final novel, Sir Charles Grandison, set it apart. I argue that the ways in which Richardson innovated in the final volume in particular altered his attitude toward closure. Richardson carried this modified way of thinking into the work of his late life, as self-editor and anthologizer. Grandison is a vital key to understanding his didactic project as a whole—and is, in many ways, the conclusion of that project. Moreover, Richardson's moves are far from unique, and examining the form of Richardson's ending begins to show us a more comprehensive understanding of the history of the novel

"Wanderer’s End: Understanding Burney’s Approach to Endings"

This essay is part of a larger project that investigates the ways in which Burney's endings (in her novels, plays, and life-writing) create a sense (or non-sense) of an ending. Here I consider Burney's final novel, The Wanderer, in its place as Burney's final fictional ending. In my reading of Burney’s novel-writing career, The Wanderer is at the end of a writing life marked by expanding focus, wherein Burney consistently aspired to masterful unity but fought against the structures that were commonly used to define wholeness and completion. In the volume endings of The Wanderer, Burney explodes nearly every signifier of closure she used in her preceding novels. Once she reaches the ultimate end, Burney is left with the difficult task of crafting a satisfying close from these same elements. I argue that Burney’s final ending propels us back into the text, promoting a rereading that proves to be aesthetically, politically, and morally rewarding. Further, Burney’s confrontations with the common signifiers of closure mirror a larger literary reality that is more complex than has been previously understood