An Examination of Wladimir Kaminer’s Humor

Humor is a quality of amusement that is evoked by mishap plus time. The source of the mishap may be a crude theme, embarrassing situation or interpersonal clash caused by various incongruencies. One must be chronologically and spatially removed from the occurrence for the situation to be considered humorous. The audience must have the ability to recognize and relate to the absurdity. Scholars recognize three main theories of humor. Superiority theory involves the application of judgement and superiority on themes or people who are often perceived as crude, lowly, or controversial. Relief theory sees humor as a means by which tense or embarrassing situations can be relieved, in which no harm is done to those involved. Incongruity theory emerges in situations where stark or subtle differences in culture or expectations cause an interpersonal clash, where each supposes his is the authentic perspective and the other’s the improper. Wladimir Kaminer (b. 1967) is a Russian-born immigrant to Germany and best-selling author of more than 20 books that describe the humorous interactions between Germans and immigrants to that country, especially Russians. To determine which theory best explained the humor in Kaminer’s works, each group member read one of Kaminer’s books, then suggested three chapters from their book that best highlight the humor of their respective title for group analysis. The chapters were analyzed by each group member for categorization under one, two, or all three theories of humor. The results were entered into a chart to visualize the distribution of the group’s individual evaluations of each chapter. A Venn diagram best illustrates our results, which show that the humor of most of the chapters is best explained by a combination of at least two theories with Incongruity Theory being the most common element of every combination. Conclusion After the four researchers examined 12 stories from four books, they determined that humor is most commonly displayed as a combination of two to three of the theories. Particularly in the humor of Wladimir Kaminer, incogruency theory forms the basis of most cases of humor. “The incongruity theory is the most important of the three explanation models since every comic effect can be traced back to a moment of incongruity” (Bogomolova 2010, p. 20)

Identifying Hail Signatures in Satellite Imagery from the 9-10 August 2011 Severe Weather Event

Severe thunderstorms can produce large hail that causes property damage, livestock fatalities, and crop failure. However, detailed storm surveys of hail damage conducted by the National Weather Service (NWS) are not required. Current gaps also exist between Storm Prediction Center (SPC) hail damage estimates and cropinsurance payouts. NASA's Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument aboard the Terra and Aqua satellites can be used to support NWS damage assessments, particularly to crops during the growing season. The twoday severe weather event across western Nebraska and central Kansas during 910 August 2011 offers a case study for investigating hail damage signatures by examining changes in Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) derived from MODIS imagery. By analyzing hail damage swaths in satellite imagery, potential economic losses due to crop damage can be quantified and further improve the estimation of weather impacts on agriculture without significantly increasing manpower requirements

Relationships between algal biomass and diversity with stream size and adjacent land use

Land use adjacent to waterways, such as development or agriculture, alters hydrological patterns leading to increases in runoff and nutrient input. Forests and wetlands, as natural land cover types, reduce water movement and allow infiltration into soil. We measured algal biomass and diversity in order to quantify the influence neighboring land cover types have on streams in Northeastern Indiana. In the study area, cultivated crops were the dominant land cover type, with open development and deciduous forest following. Emergent wetland area had the greatest influence on algal biomass, with increases in wetland area decreasing biomass. However, open development, low intensity development, grassland, shrub, and forested wetlands added to increases in biomass. Conversely, forested wetlands reduced algal richness, while open development and pastures increased richness. Because open development (i.e. dominated by turf grass, lawns, parks, golf courses) was the second most common land cover type and positively influenced both algal biomass and richness, management of those properties will likely have direct impact on nutrient flow into streams. Additionally, adding functional wetlands dominated by emergent herbaceous plants will directly impact future algal biomass

Muddying the waters: Impacts of a bogflow on carbon transport and water quality

Landslides of peat have been recorded throughout Britain and Ireland for centuries. Whilst these events are not uncommon, land degradation can amplify their magnitude and frequency and, crucially, their immediate impacts are rarely documented. A 20,000 m3 bogflow event that occurred on land undergoing development in the Irish border area in November 2020 was monitored at high frequency in the major receiving river system (384 km2). Samples collected every seven hours over a 28 day period at a site 37 km downstream were analysed for suspended sediment (SS), particulate organic carbon (POC) and dissolved organic carbon (DOC and UV-derived fractions), synchronous with hydrometeorological data and turbidity. There was no impact of the bogflow on DOC concentrations or loads. However, concentrations of SS and POC in the first samples after the bogflow were 825 mg/L and 346 mg C/L, respectively, and fish kill was estimated at 100 %. Analysis of detrended SS and POC loads suggested the main impacts of the bogflow on water quality lasted just eight days. Over this period, an additional 1318 t of SS and 608 t of POC were transported as far as the monitoring point, equating to 325 % more SS and 925 % more POC than would have been expected otherwise under the same river flow conditions. The carbon loss and water quality impacts were short lived, but nevertheless severe, and highlight the vulnerability of peatlands and the risks when these environments are inappropriately managed

Approaches to herbicide (MCPA) pollution mitigation in drinking water source catchments using enhanced space and time monitoring

Publication history: Accepted - 30 September 2020; Published online - 8 October 2020Freshwater occurrences of the selective acid herbicide 2-methyl-4-chloro-phenoxyacetic acid (MCPA) are an ongoing regulatory and financial issue for water utility industries as the number and magnitude of detections increase, particularly in surface water catchments. Assessments for mitigating pesticide pollution in catchments used as drinking water sources require a combination of catchment-based and water treatment solutions, but approaches are limited by a lack of empirical data. In this study, an enhanced spatial (11 locations) and temporal (7-hourly to daily sampling) monitoring approach was employed to address these issues in an exemplar surface water source catchment (384 km2). The spatial sampling revealed that MCPA was widespread, with occurrences above the 0.1 μg L−1 threshold for a single pesticide being highly positively correlated to sub-catchments with higher proportions of ‘Improved Grassland’ land use (r = 0.84). These data provide a strong foundation for targeting catchment-based mitigation solutions and also add to the debate on the ecosystems services provided by such catchments. Additionally, of the 999 temporal samples taken over 12 months from the catchment outlet, 25% were above the drinking water threshold of 0.1 μg L−1. This prevalence of high concentrations presents costly problems for source water treatment. Using these data, abstraction shutdowns were simulated for five scenarios using hydrometeorological data to explore the potential to avoid intake of high MCPA concentrations. The scenarios stopped abstraction for 4.2–9.3% of the April–October period and reduced intake of water containing over 0.1 μg L−1 of MCPA by 16–31%. This represents an important development for real-time proxy assessments for water abstraction in the absence of more direct pesticide monitoring data.This work was funded by the Source to Tap project (project reference IVA5018 – www.sourcetotap.eu). The Source to Tap project is supported by the European Union's INTERREG VA Programme, managed by the Special EU Programmes Body (SEUPB)

Data Quality and Study Compliance Among College Students Across 2 Recruitment Sources: Two Study Investigation

Background: Models of satisficing suggest that study participants may not fully process survey items and provide accurate responses when survey burden is higher and when participant motivation is lower. Participants who do not fully process survey instructions can reduce a study’s power and hinder generalizability. Common concerns among researchers using self-report measures are data quality and participant compliance. Similarly, attrition can hurt the power and generalizability of a study. Objective: Given that college students comprise most samples in psychological studies, especially examinations of student issues and psychological health, it is critical to understand how college student recruitment sources impact data quality (operationalized as attention check items with directive instructions and correct answers) and retention (operationalized as the completion of follow-up surveys over time). This examination aimed to examine the following: whether data quality varies across recruitment sources, whether study retention varies across recruitment sources, the impact of data quality on study variable associations, the impact of data quality on measures of internal consistency, and whether the demographic qualities of participants significantly vary across those who failed attention checks versus those who did not. Methods: This examination was a follow-up analysis of 2 previously published studies to explore data quality and study compliance. Study 1 was a cross-sectional, web-based survey examining college stressors and psychological health (282/407, 69.3% female; 230/407, 56.5% White, 113/407, 27.8% Black; mean age 22.65, SD 6.73 years). Study 2 was a longitudinal college drinking intervention trial with an in-person baseline session and 2 web-based follow-up surveys (378/528, 71.6% female; 213/528, 40.3% White, 277/528, 52.5% Black; mean age 19.85, SD 1.65 years). Attention checks were included in both studies to assess data quality. Participants for both studies were recruited from a psychology participation pool (a pull-in method; for course credit) and the general student body (a push-out method; for monetary payment or raffle entry). Results: A greater proportion of participants recruited through the psychology pool failed attention checks in both studies, suggesting poorer data quality. The psychology pool was also associated with lower retention rates over time. After screening out those who failed attention checks, some correlations among the study variables were stronger, some were weaker, and some were fairly similar, potentially suggesting bias introduced by including these participants. Differences among the indicators of internal consistency for the study measures were negligible. Finally, attention check failure was not significantly associated with most demographic characteristics but varied across some racial identities. This suggests that filtering out data from participants who failed attention checks may not limit sample diversity. Conclusions: Investigators conducting college student research should carefully consider recruitment and include attention checks or other means of detecting poor quality data. Recommendations for researchers are discussed. JMIR Form Res 2022;6(12):e3948