Current State of Scholarship in Christian Liberal Arts Schools A Study of CCCU Teaching Faculty and Librarians

This is the first of two articles that explains the results of an in-depth research study of teaching faculty and librarian scholarship within the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). This article examines the nature and extent of that scholarship and the article examines its necessit

Christian Academics Need to Increase their Publishing: A Study of CCCU Teaching Faculty and Librarians

This is the second of two articles that explains the results of an in-depth research study of teaching faculty and librarian scholarship within the Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU). The first article examined the nature and extent of that scholarship and this article examines its necessity

Ecological and economic benefits of integrating sheep into viticulture production

The integration of crop and livestock systems has been recognized for its potential to reduce the environmental impacts associated with agriculture and improve farmer livelihoods. However, to date, most research has focused on the integration of cattle into crop and pasture systems. Here we examine the integration of sheep into vineyards and assess farmers’ perceived benefits and costs of the practice. Viticulture expansion has led to significant land use change in recent years and new environmental challenges, particularly with respect to herbicide use. Sheep integration into vineyards offers the potential to utilize the synergies of both systems to reduce external inputs, promote soil health, and increase farmer profit. Our study focuses in New Zealand, the world’s 15th largest wine producer, particularly in Marlborough, which produces 75% of the country’s wine. As a result, the case study is an excellent representation of New Zealand viticulture, while also providing unique insights into a novel practice. Using a semi-structured interview and survey, we interviewed fifteen farmers representing five percent of total New Zealand wine production to examine ecological and economic benefits of sheep integration in viticulture systems. We find that seasonal integration of sheep during vine dormancy is common, while integration during the growing season is rare. Overall, farmers perceive significantly more benefits than challenges with the integration of sheep into vineyards, particularly reduced mowing (100% of farmers) and herbicide use (66% of farmers). On average, farmers reported 1.3 fewer herbicide applications annually, saving US$$56 per hectare. As well, farmers indicated they were doing 2.2 fewer mows annually saving US$$64 per hectare. These results suggest that wide-scale adoption of seasonal integration of sheep and viticulture can provide large ecological benefits and higher profitability vis-à-vis conventional viticulture practices; however, further integration of the two systems may provide even greater benefits not currently realized

Stunted child - overweight mother pairs

health ,Nutritionally induced diseases ,Children Growth ,

Are determinants of rural and urban food security and nutritional status different?

Undernutrition of children 0-60 months old in Mozambique is much higher in rural than in urban areas. Food security is about the same, although substantial regional differences exist. Given these outcomes, we hypothesized that the determinants of food security and nutritional status in rural and urban areas of Mozambique would differ as well. Yet we find that the determinants of food insecurity and malnutrition, and the magnitudes of their effects, are very nearly the same. The difference in observed outcomes appears primarily due to differences in the levels of critical determinants rather than in the nature of the determinants themselves.Malnutrition. ,Nutritional status. ,Rural conditions Analysis. ,Urban poor Mozambique. ,Rural poor Mozambique. ,Food security. ,

Stunted child - overweight mother pairs

"This paper explores the global prevalence of an emerging phenomenon: the coexistence of a stunted child and an overweight mother in the same household. It also tests whether this phenomenon is associated with a country's level of economic development and urbanization. Policy directions for public nutrition are highlighted. Data from 36 Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) were used (23 in Africa, 8 in Latin America, and 5 in Asia). Stunting was defined as height-for-age 25 kg/m 2 . World Bank and United Nations figures were used for GNP per capita (our indicator of economic development) and for level of urbanization, respectively. Descriptive statistics were derived, and regression analysis was used to model the association between economic development, urbanization, and the prevalence of stunted children and overweight women (SCOWT). The prevalence of SCOWT is generally below 10 percent, except in four countries, of which three are in Latin America. Among our sample of countries, SCOWT is generally more prevalent in Latin America than in Africa, and is below 5 percent in all five Asian countries. Contrary to our expectations, SCOWT is not necessarily more prevalent in urban than rural areas. In fact, when economic development is controlled for, SCOWT is associated with urbanization only in Latin America. In Africa and Asia, SCOWT is associated with economic development, but not urbanization, which suggests that SCOWT may emerge only at levels of economic development and urbanization higher than currently seen in most of the Asian and African countries studied...." from Authors' Abstracthealth ,Nutritionally induced diseases ,Children Growth ,

Sparse Coding on Stereo Video for Object Detection

Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNN) require millions of labeled training examples for image classification and object detection tasks, which restrict these models to domains where such datasets are available. In this paper, we explore the use of unsupervised sparse coding applied to stereo-video data to help alleviate the need for large amounts of labeled data. We show that replacing a typical supervised convolutional layer with an unsupervised sparse-coding layer within a DCNN allows for better performance on a car detection task when only a limited number of labeled training examples is available. Furthermore, the network that incorporates sparse coding allows for more consistent performance over varying initializations and ordering of training examples when compared to a fully supervised DCNN. Finally, we compare activations between the unsupervised sparse-coding layer and the supervised convolutional layer, and show that the sparse representation exhibits an encoding that is depth selective, whereas encodings from the convolutional layer do not exhibit such selectivity. These result indicates promise for using unsupervised sparse-coding approaches in real-world computer vision tasks in domains with limited labeled training data