Progress and opportunities in lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender health communications

This article describes elements of effective health communication and highlights strategies that may best be adopted or adapted in relation to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations. Studies have documented the utility of multidimensional approaches to health communication from the macro level of interventions targeting entire populations to the micro level of communication between health care provider and consumer. Although evidence of health disparities in LGBT communities underscores the importance of population-specific interventions, health promotion campaigns rarely target these populations and health communication activities seldom account for the diversity of LGBT communities. Advances in health communication suggest promising direction for LGBT-specific risk prevention and health promotion strategies on community, group, and provider/consumer levels. Opportunities for future health communication efforts include involving LGBT communities in the development of appropriate health communication campaigns and materials, enhancing media literacy among LGBT individuals, supporting LGBT-focused research and evaluation of health communication activities, and ensuring that health care providers possess the knowledge, skills, and competency to communicate effectively with LGBT consumers

Using high resolution optical imagery to detect earthquake-induced liquefaction: the 2011 Christchurch earthquake

Using automated supervised methods with satellite and aerial imageries for liquefaction mapping is a promising step in providing detailed and region-scale maps of liquefaction extent immediately after an earthquake. The accuracy of these methods depends on the quantity and quality of training samples and the number of available spectral bands. Digitizing a large number of high-quality training samples from an event may not be feasible in the desired timeframe for rapid response as the training pixels for each class should be typical and accurately represent the spectral diversity of that specific class. To perform automated classification for liquefaction detection, we need to understand how to build the optimal and accurate training dataset. Using multispectral optical imagery from the 22 February, 2011 Christchurch earthquake, we investigate the effects of quantity of high-quality training pixel samples as well as the number of spectral bands on the performance of a pixel-based parametric supervised maximum likelihood classifier for liquefaction detection. We find that the liquefaction surface effects are bimodal in terms of spectral signature and therefore, should be classified as either wet liquefaction or dry liquefaction. This is due to the difference in water content between these two modes. Using 5-fold cross-validation method, we evaluate performance of the classifier on datasets with different pixel sizes of 50, 100, 500, 2000, and 4000. Also, the effect of adding spectral information was investigated by adding once only the near infrared (NIR) band to the visible red, green, and blue (RGB) bands and the other time using all available 8 spectral bands of the World-View 2 satellite imagery. We find that the classifier has high accuracies (75%–95%) when using the 2000 pixels-size dataset that includes the RGB+NIR spectral bands and therefore, increasing to 4000 pixels-size dataset and/or eight spectral bands may not be worth the required time and cost. We also investigate accuracies of the classifier when using aerial imagery with same number of training pixels and either RGB or RGB+NIR bands and find that the classifier accuracies are higher when using satellite imagery with same number of training pixels and spectral information. The classifier identifies dry liquefaction with higher user accuracy than wet liquefaction across all evaluated scenarios. To improve classification performance for wet liquefaction detection, we also investigate adding geospatial information of building footprints to improve classification performance. We find that using a building footprint mask to remove them from the classification process, increases wet liquefaction user accuracy by roughly 10%.Published versio

Spiders in Paint Creek, a local wetland: Initial findings in family composition and distribution

The presence of spiders in terrestrial ecosystems has been studied extensively. Little is known, however, about the role of spiders in aquatic ecosystems, especially wetlands. The purpose of this study was to obtain a preliminary understanding of the spider community found in a local wetland, Paint Creek. Aerial and ground samples were collected along a 50-meter transect in a dense stand of native Typha angustifolia. Samples were taken monthly from May to September, and were analyzed for both species composition and plant biomass. Initial findings indicate that spider communities in wetlands are highly variable. Ground samples yielded the largest number of individuals, high plant biomass yielded high species composition, and all variables changed with season. Overall, the family Lycosidae exhibited the highest abundance, followed by Clubionidae. Unexpectedly, the family Tetragnathidae exhibited the least number of individuals collected over the five month period. Continued sampling is needed to further understand the complex dynamics of spider communities in wetland habitats

Maine’s Investment Imperative

In the past two decades, Maine’s per capita income ranking has not topped 27th, and in recent years, the state’s relative position has dropped to 36th. More importantly, the gap between Maine and the United States has increased since 1990. In this article, Maine’s State Economist Laurie Lachance lays out a long-term investment strategy for Maine that focuses on education, research and development, comprehensive tax reform, greater efficiencies in the delivery of state and local services, and limits on government spending. Lachance argues that choices must be made even in times of fiscal crisis. Failure to invest means failure, period