The Improved Acre: The Besse Farm as a Case Study in Landclearing, Abandonment, and Reforestation

From the vantage of the twenty-first century, it seems remarkable that farmers, working with only hand tools and farm animals, converted over half of New England’s “primeval” forests to tillage and pasture in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This period was marked by transitions as farmers responded to new markets, changing family values, and declining natural resources. These forces brought an end to agrarian expansion and caused New England’s iconic pastoral landscape to begin to revert to forestland. A case study based on the former Jabez Besse, Jr. farm in central upland Maine provides a link to New England’s agricultural landscape history and the practices and values of families whose lives were focused on the improved acre. Theresa Kerchner earned a Masters Degree in Ecology and Environmental Science from the University of Maine in 2002 where she researched the land-use history of the Besse farm in Wayne. From 1997-2003 she worked with local classes and community members on several studies in natural history, local history, and art, and co-edited Life and Schools in Wayne, 1890-1940; Waiting: An Anthology of Poems and Photographs of a Year with Hay; Images of Our Community; and Our Year with Birds: Local Lessons in Ornithology, Ecology and History. She is currently the Stewardship Director for the Kennebec Land Trust in Winthrop

Advances Towards Regioselective Synthesis of Secondary Alkylboranes and 1,2-cis Glycosides

The development of regioselective and diastereoselective processes provides chemists with versatile synthetic tools to access new synthetic pathways. This thesis focuses on two specific areas of regio- and diastereocontrol: hydroboration of olefins and intramolecular aglycone deliveries. The first chapter provides background literature containing existing reported strategies for regiocontrol using copper catalysts in hydroboration of olefins. This chapter lays the groundwork and motivation for investigation into the hydroboration of olefins. Subsequently, the second chapter discusses the development of a versatile procedure for the copper-catalyzed hydroboration of terminal olefins leading to the synthesis of secondary alkylboranes. This procedure provides the reversed regioselectivity compared with widely used hydroboration procedures. The newly synthesized secondary alkylboranes can be transformed to the corresponding trifluoroborate salts and used in photocatalytic cross-couplings to synthesize new carbon-carbon bonds. Furthermore, advances in the regioselective hydroboration of 1,1-disubstituted and 1,2-disubstituted alkenes are described, with efforts in the former of these areas providing the most promising outcomes for future applications. The third chapter begins with a discussion of literature methods for intramolecular aglycone delivery in the synthesis of 1,2-cis glycosides. Within this context, an overview of activating thioglycosides and latent-activation of glycosides for intermolecular glycosylation reactions is provided. The fourth chapter the describes the preparation of sugar silanes containing an o-(p-methoxyphenylethynyl)phenyl group and their utilization in intramolecular aglycone delivery strategies. Beginning with the new silanes prepared, dehydrogenative silylation with menthol was accomplished with tris(pentafluorophenyl) borane catalyst, effectively tethering the aglycone. The tethered assemblies were then examined in intramolecular aglycone delivery strategies. High levels of diastereocontrol were observed, and future work will focus on optimization of the glycosylation yields.PHDChemistryUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/146128/1/hkerch_1.pd

Effects of a 5-HT3 agonist and antagonist on inter-male aggression in Mus musculus

Research has revealed an inverse relationship between serotonin (5-HT) levels in the brain and aggressive behavior. However, effects on aggression at the level of the receptor have yet to be elucidated for many 5-HT receptor subtypes. This study examined the effects of the 5-HT3 receptor agonist m-chlorophenylbiguanide (mCPBG) and antagonist ondansetron on inter-male aggression in mice. Using a resident-intruder paradigm designed to assess both offensive and defensive aggression, male C57BL/6J mice received 1 mg/kg i.p. injections of either mCPBG, ondansetron, or an inactive vehicle and were subsequently exposed to male AKR/J mice for a period of 10 minutes. Attack latency and the proportion of time engaged in a range of defensive behaviors were recorded. Subject C57BL/6J mice were then immediately run in an open field test for an additional 10 minutes to examine any anxiolytic or sedative effects of the drugs. Results show no significant differences between drug groups in either offensive or defensive behavior. No significant differences were observed between drug groups and open field activity; however, significant differences were seen between the offensive and defensive condition in the open field. In conclusion, this study fails to reveal any significant effects of the 5-HT3 agents on inter-male aggression, which may reflect a functional difference between the 5-HT3 receptor and the remaining G-protein coupled 5-HT receptor. However, this conclusion is limited by the large variance in behavior combined with small sample sizes, or the possibility of a drug dose insufficient for behavioral effects

Charter Schools and Collective Bargaining: Compatible Marriage or Illegitimate Relationship

The rapid increase in charter schools has been fueled by the view that traditional public schools have failed because of their monopoly on public education. Charter schools, freed from the bureaucratic regulation that dominates traditional public schools, are viewed as agents of change that will shock traditional public schools out of their complacency. Among the features of the failed status quo are teacher tenure, uniform salary grids and strict work rules, matters that teacher unions hold dear. Yet unions have begun organizing teacher in charter schools. This development prompts the question whether unionization and charter schools are compatible. In contrast to traditional public schools whose labor relations are based on the traditional industrial labor relations model, charter schools are envisioned as high performance workplaces in which teachers gain enhanced psychological purchase as a result of sharing in the risks of the enterprise. We look to traditional public schools and find exceptions where teachers and their unions have become agents of change and risk takers. We ask why these exceptional cases have not spread more broadly and find the answer in public sector labor law doctrine which has channeled teacher unions away from risk sharing and toward insulating their members from the risks of the enterprise. We then consider the labor law governing charter schools. We discuss whether charter schools are governed by the National Labor Relations Act or state law and survey the different approaches that have developed under state law. We conclude that all of these approaches are based on the industrial relations model which is incompatible with the high performance workplaces envisioned for charter schools. We propose to free charter schools and their teachers from traditional labor law doctrine and propose a new approach to teacher voice that, in keeping with the vision of charter schools as shaking up the status quo by injecting competition, will lead to competition and innovation in teacher involvement in the regulation of their workplaces

Challenging the orthodoxy: union learning representatives as organic intellectuals

Teacher education and continuing professional development have become a key areas of controversy in England since the period of school sector restructuring following the 1988 Education Reform Act. More recently teacher training and professional development have often been used to promote and reinforce a narrow focus on the government’s ‘standards agenda’. However, the emerging discourse of ‘new professionalism’ has raised the profile of professional development in schools, and together with union learning representatives, there are opportunities to secure real improvements in teachers’ access to continuing professional development. This paper argues however that union learning representatives must go beyond advocating for better access to professional development and should raise more fundamental questions about the nature of professional development and the education system it serves. Drawing on Gramsci’s notion of the ‘organic intellectual’, the paper argues that union learning representatives have a key role as organisers of ideas – creating spaces in which the ideological dominance of current policy orthodoxy might be challenged

Elementary vortex pinning potential in superconductors with unconventional order parameter

The elementary vortex pinning potential is studied in unconventional superconductors within the framework of the quasiclassical theory of superconductivity. Numerical results are presented for d-, anisotropic s-, and isotropic s-wave superconductors to show explicitly that in unconventional superconductors the vortex pinning potential is determined mainly by the loss of the condensation energy in bulk due to the presence of the pinning center, i.e., by the breakdown of the Anderson's theorem. It is found that the vortex pinning energy in the d-wave pairing case is 4 -- 13 times larger than those in the s-wave pairing cases. This means that an enhancement of pinning effect in unconventional superconductors occurs due to the breakdown of the Anderson's theorem. The case of a chiral p-wave superconductor is also investigated in terms of the vortex core states subject to the Andreev reflection, where important is whether the vorticity and chirality are parallel or antiparallel.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures included; paper for Proceedings of the symposium SDP2001, Tokyo, 200

Parque urbano na Beira Mar de São José SC

TCC (graduação) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Centro Tecnológico. ArquiteturaTCC sem resumo

Developing music teacher identities: an international multi-site study

This study investigates pre-service music teacher’s (PSMT) perceptions of their professional identities. University-level education students in the United States America (USA), Spain and Australia were all asked interview questions based on general themes relevant to teacher identity development, and their responses were subjected to content analysis. Similarities were found in their perceptions of the role of ‘music teacher’ and their pre-university experiences/influences. Across the sites it seems that there was a dynamic and shifting relationship between PSMTs’ understandings of themselves as ‘musicians’ or as ‘teachers’ during their university years. This study confirms previous research in the area and contributes to the field in its discovery that these themes are found across three international sites. Implications of the findings are discussed and recommendations made for future research and practice