Non-Profits and Living Wages

Non-Profit organizations must find ways to divide their budgets between staff wages and program services, as well as paying their staff a living wage. Unlike for-profits who can increase prices for consumers when they need to increase staff wages, non-profits do not have this luxury. The goal of this project was to collect data on how non-profits manage their budgets and if they provide staff with living wages. A survey was sent out with a total of eight responses, giving a breakdown of various non-profit’s budgets and if they pay a living wage. Overall, seven out of eight non-profits pay their staff a living wage, however despite this multiple organizations are struggling with staff turnover and hiring new employees. Non-profits may need to do more than pay a living wage in order to keep staff, and hire quality employees. Based on this survey total compensation packages may be a better way to evaluate non-profit pay instead of wages, because the most of the non-profits reported paying above a living wage, but still reported struggling with keeping staff

Can Curriculum Changes Improve the Deliverables the Business Studies Departments of Maine’s Community Colleges Provide its Stakeholders?

Recent seminars and meetings between state officials and business leaders have established that a perceived disconnect exists between the skill\u27s, knowledge, and abilities needed by their enterprises and the skill\u27s, knowledge, and abilities being taught by the state’s educational systems. The Maine Community College System\u27s vision states that the system answers to a number of stakeholders by providing a two year comprehensive, affordable, and accessible college education... dedicated to building a quality workforce for Maine” (Maine Community College, n.d.). While the MCCS is a relatively new institution, this suggests that the community college arena is the most logical starting place for investigating and identifying these disconnects. Through interviews with students and businesses, surveys for both groups of stakeholders were developed. The resulting survey data was used to ascertain any disconnects and suggest possible venues for determining if curriculum changes would address them. Suggestions for future directions are offered

Estimating Policy and Program Effects with Observational Data: The “Differences-in-Differences” Estimator

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Searches for new physics with boosted top quarks in the MadAnalysis 5 and Rivet frameworks

High-momentum top quarks are a natural physical system in collider experiments for testing models of new physics, and jet substructure methods are key both to exploiting their largest decay mode and to assuaging resolution difficulties as the boosted system becomes increasingly collimated in the detector. To be used in new-physics interpretation studies, it is crucial that related methods get implemented in analysis frameworks allowing for the reinterpretation of the results of the LHC such as MadAnalysis 5 and Rivet. We describe the implementation of the HEPTopTagger algorithm in these two frameworks, and we exemplify the usage of the resulting functionalities to explore the sensitivity of boosted top reconstruction performance to new physics contributions from the Standard Model Effective Field Theory. The results of this study lead to important conclusions about the implicit assumption of Standard-Model-like top-quark decays in associated collider analyses, and for the prospects to constrain the Standard Model Effective Field Theory via kinematic observables built from boosted semi-leptonic $t\bar{t}$ events selected using HEPTopTagger.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figure

Synopsis of biological data on shortnose sturgeon, Acipenser brevirostrum LeSueur 1818

Information on the biology and populations of the shortnose sturgeon, Acipenser brevirostrum, is compiled, reviewed, and analyzed in the FAO species synopsis style. New information indicates this species exhibits biological and life-cycle differences over its north-south latitudinal range and that it is more abundant than previously thought. (PDF file contains 51 pages.

Invasive neuroendocrine tumor of the kidney: a case report

Neuroendocrine tumors (NETs) involve the genitourinary system in less than 1% of cases, with primary renal carcinoids comprising only 19% of reported genitourinary NETs (56 cases worldwide). We report a case of a renal NET presenting as a large renal mass with extensive local invasion, requiring definitive radical en bloc resection via a thoracoabdominal approach

Δ⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol and 2-AG decreases neurite outgrowth and differentially affects ERK1/2 and Akt signaling in hiPSC-derived cortical neurons

Endocannabinoids regulate different aspects of neurodevelopment. In utero exposure to the exogenous psychoactive cannabinoid Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Δ9-THC), has been linked with abnormal cortical development in animal models. However, much less is known about the actions of endocannabinoids in human neurons. Here we investigated the effect of the endocannabinoid 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2AG) and Δ9-THC on the development of neuronal morphology and activation of signaling kinases, in cortical neurons derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Our data indicate that the cannabinoid type 1 receptor (CB1R), but not the cannabinoid 2 receptor (CB2R), GPR55 or TRPV1 receptors, is expressed in young, immature hiPSC-derived cortical neurons. Consistent with previous reports, 2AG and Δ9-THC negatively regulated neurite outgrowth. Interestingly, acute exposure to both 2AG and Δ9-THC inhibited phosphorylation of serine/threonine kinase extracellular signal-regulated protein kinases (ERK1/2), whereas Δ9-THC also reduced phosphorylation of Akt (aka PKB). Moreover, the CB1R inverse agonist SR 141716A attenuated the decrease in neurite outgrowth and ERK1/2 phosphorylation induced by 2AG and Δ9-THC. Taken together, our data suggest that hiPSC-derived cortical neurons express CB1Rs and are responsive to exogenous cannabinoids. Thus, hiPSC-neurons may represent a good cellular model for investigating the role of the endocannabinoid system in regulating cellular processes in developing human neurons

Does environmental enrichment promote recovery from stress in rainbow trout?

The EC Directive on animal experimentation suggests that all protected animals should have enrichment to improve welfare yet relatively little research has been conducted on the impact of enrichment in fish. Studies employing enrichment in zebrafish have been contradictory and other fish species may require species-specific enrichments relevant to their ecology. Salmonids are important experimental models in studies within aquaculture, toxicology and natural ecosystems. This study therefore sought to establish whether an enriched environment in an experimental aquarium may promote improved welfare in rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) by enhancing their recovery from invasive procedures. Trout were held individually in either barren (no tank ornamentation) or enriched (gravel, plants and an area of cover) conditions and recovery rates after a noxious stimulus and a standard stressor were investigated by monitoring behaviour, opercular beat rate and plasma cortisol concentrations. Fish were randomly assigned to one of four treatment groups: Control (undisturbed), Sham (handled but not manipulated), Stress (air emersion) and Pain (subcutaneous injection of acetic acid). The results suggest that for rainbow trout environmental enrichment may not be an important factor when the fish is responding to a painful stimulus. However, it does appear to promote recovery and ameliorate adverse effects following a stressor. Fish held in barren conditions were potentially more stressed as seen by increased activity following imposition of the stressor. These results have important implications for the husbandry and welfare of captive rainbow trout and suggest that enriched environments may be preferable to barren environments in experimental studies