Can Dairy Manure be Profitably Composted in Maine?

Manure contains many important nutrients that are vital to the growth of crops. When this material is applied to fields in an inappropriate manner or in quantities too large for the soil to handle, this leads to pollution in the form of leaching and runoff, which causes contamination of ground and surface waters. An average cow produces one hundred pounds of manure per day (1 8 tons per year). Composted manure could provide farmers with a more environmentally friendly alternative to traditional manure management practices. A review of the composting literature determined that a wide variety of markets do exist for composted dairy manure. The cost of producing the raw compost product was calculated along with the cost of bagging and transporting compost. It was determined that bulk compost could not be profitably transported to market, but that bagged compost can be profitably transported to market

Adventures in Assessment: Lib100 @ Clemson University

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The Importance of Being Related: How the Nuclear Family Functioned Within the Urban Environment of Medieval Norwich 1250-1348

Did medieval families function on a nuclear or an extended level? This thesis will show that the families in urban Norwich, England in the Middle Ages worked, loved and played within strong nuclear families instead of floundering in a sea of extended relatives and neighbors. Using two books of deeds from the city of Norwich as well as the police records and other assorted information from the city, this paper will prove that nuclear family relationships, with their economic and social bonds, were of primary importance to the functionality of the conjugal family and that much less focus was centered on the outside community and the network of extended kin. The first chapter will look at the city of Norwich and introduce the sources and the topic. The second chapter will examine the husband/wife relationship and how it contributed to the strength of the nuclear family and its concentration of the success of its primary members. The third chapter looks at the bonds that existed between parents and their children and between siblings. The fourth chapter proves that widows sought either to remain independent from these medieval families out of a desire to retain their property, or they remarried and joined another family, which strengthened the conjugal family bonds by defining more distinctly the members of the core family as opposed to those who were considered outsideres. The fifth chapter shows how the nuclear family interacted with its network of relatives, both by blood and by marriage, as well as the outside community of neighbors and fellow citizens. The final chapter summarizes the argument that the conjugal relations between husbands and wives and parents and children were of primary importance in medieval Norwich and that these relationships were more important than those of the extended family and outside community. This is the first time that these records have been used to prove the close nuclear family ties that existed in one particular urban environment, and this thesis provides a valuable look at specific examples of functional and active medieval conjugal families

Transforming the Way Librarians Think about Themselves as Teachers: A Design Based Research Approach

How can a series of workshops focused on educational technology and teaching techniques support academic instruction librarians in transforming their self-concept as teachers and encourage the use of active teaching practicesin the classroom

Beware the Mammoni: My Search to Understand Domestic Violence in Italian-American Culture and Rhode Island\u27s Family Court

Since I disapproved of stereotypes, I found myself trying to comprehend Italian-American culture after I became executive director of the largest shelter in Rhode Island for battered women and their children. Many of those I met were fleeing Italian-American men. On 60 Minutes, Lesley Stahl reported from Italy about the large number of single men who still live with their parents and are known as mammoni, or “mama’s boys.” Their mothers dutifully cook and clean for them. The Roman Catholic Church’s view of the Holy Family reinforces mammoni culture. I learned that Rome’s founding legend starts with men colluding to commit violence against women. The Italian Renaissance graphically celebrates this “Rape of the Sabine Women” in sculpture and paintings. A story in Boccaccio’s Decameron and Botticelli’s paintings of men hunting and slaying women reinforce this cultural algorithm of sexual harassment and abuse. Leoncavallo’s opera Pagliacci portrays domestic violence as art. The coercive control that many battered mothers encounter at home feels identical to that at family court. I describe specific Italian-American cases, including professional abuses in the court, where guardians ad litem often orchestrate custody cases unethically. Though the Rhode Island Supreme Court’s Ethics Advisory Panel has recognized this problem in theory, judges fail to confront it in fact. We can and must challenge abusive behavior entrenched in our cultures. We can and must create a culture of law that insists upon the ethical use of power in our custody courts

Creating Online Tutorials for Freshmen

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Internal Dissent: East Tennessee\u27s Civil War, 1849-1865.

East Tennessee, though historically regarded as a Unionist monolith, was politically and ideologically divided during the Civil War. The entrance of the East Tennessee and Virginia and East Tennessee and Georgia railroads connected the economically isolated region to Virginia and the deep South. This trade network created a southern subculture within East Tennessee. These divisions had deepened and resulted by the Civil War in guerilla warfare throughout the region. East Tennessee\u27s response to the sectional crisis and the Civil War was varied within the region itself. Analyzing railroad records, manuscript collections, census data, and period newspapers demonstrates that three subdivisions existed within East Tennessee - Northeast Tennessee, Knox County, and Southeast Tennessee. These subregions help explain East Tennessee\u27s varied responses to sectional and internal strife. East Tennessee, much like the nation as a whole, was internally divided throughout the Civil War era

The effect of environmental variables on amphibian breeding phenology

Amphibian breeding phenology has generally been associated with temperature and rainfall, but these variables are not able to explain all of the variation in the timing of amphibian migrations, mating and spawning. This thesis examines some additional, previously under-acknowledged geophysical variables that may affect amphibian breeding phenology: lunar phase and the K-index of geomagnetic activity. A serendipitous observation of a large earthquake during the amphibian breeding season enabled a rare record of animal behaviour prior to an earthquake and led to an investigation into the effect of seismicity on amphibians. Data were collected on breeding migrations at three sites in the UK and Italy for frogs (Rana temporaria) and toads (Bufo bufo). Additional data were collated from published literature. Data on the arrivals of two newt species (Triturus cristatus and Lissotriton helveticus) were also analysed. Lunar phase was found to be important in Rana temporaria and Bufo bufo, with more individuals migrating, in amplexus and spawning around the full moon. Newts' response to the full moon was less clear. A meta-analysis of published data revealed that the effect of the lunar cycle on amphibians may be more prevalent than previously supposed and is species-specific, depending on the unique ecology of each species. The effects of the K- index on amphibian reproduction are unclear because of the low number of days when geomagnetism was high. Five days before a large earthquake in L'Aquila, Italy the majority of toads left the breeding site, only re- appearing when the earthquake was over. Numbers of toads were significantly correlated with days since the earthquake but not with weather variables. Finally I attempted to use the variables of interest (two measures of moon phase, plus the K-index of magnetic activity), along with weather variables to construct statistical models of amphibian breeding phenology and to predict arrivals and spawning / amplexus in single years based on the models. This met with variable success; there was a high variability between years in the ability of the models to predict breeding phenology, which could be due to site-specific factors, unmeasured environmental variables, or an endogenous component to breeding phenology