Lessons Learned From a 20-Year Collaborative Study on American Black Bears

In the 1980s, black bears (Ursus americanus) began expanding into historic habitats in northwestern Nevada, USA. Over a period of \u3e30 years, black bears recolonized areas where human populations have also increased. Our research represents one of, if not the longest-running and earliest comparative studies of a black bear population at wildland–urban interface and wildland areas in North America. As the population increased, we observed: 1) increasing human–bear conflicts in areas where several generations of people had lived in almost total absence of bears (70–80+ years); 2) changes in attitudes by the public toward bears and in the social realm regarding garbage management; and 3) changes in the demographics, behavior, and ecology of this bear population, due to an increasing human footprint on the landscape. Herein, we discuss a few of the lessons learned from this long-term study and the value of a collaborative approach between a state agency, a university, and an international conservation organization. Our collaborative approach allowed us to better understand the ecological, demographic, and behavioral changes in a large, recolonizing carnivore that is a functional omnivore, often residing at the wildland-urban interface, and to use these data to impact conservation and management. Throughout the study, our data were used extensively by various media, emphasizing public education about human–bear conflicts. This media platform proved important because of the impact it had on wildlife conservation. For example, partly in response to media coverage of our data-based education efforts, 3 Nevada counties enacted garbage management ordinances, and the Nevada legislature passed a state law prohibiting the feeding of large game mammals. Further, several million dollars in bear-resistant garbage containers are now used in the region by the public and government entities. The end result of these conservation measures has been a recolonization of the Great Basin Desert by bears from the Lake Tahoe Basin and Sierra-Nevada Range into portions of Nevada where bears have been absent for \u3e80 years

Level-1 Regional Calorimeter Trigger System for CMS

The Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) calorimeter regional trigger system is designed to detect signatures of isolated and non-isolated electrons/photons, jets, ?-leptons, and missing and total transverse energy using a deadtimeless pipelined architecture. This system contains 18 crates of custom-built electronics. The pre-production prototype backplane, boards, links and Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) have been built and their performance is characterized.Comment: Talk from the 2003 Computing in High Energy and Nuclear Physics (CHEP03), La Jolla, Ca, USA, March 2003, 6 pages, PDF. PSN THHT00

RXTE Monitoring of the Anomalous X-ray Pulsar 1E 1048.1-5937

We report on long-term monitoring of the anomalous X-ray pulsar 1E 1048.1-5937 using the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. This pulsar's timing behavior is different from that of other AXPs. In particular, the pulsar shows significant deviations from simple spin-down such that phase-coherent timing has not been possible over time spans longer than a few months. We show that in spite of the rotational irregularities, the pulsar exhibits neither pulse profile changes nor large pulsed flux variations. We discuss the implications of our results for AXP models. We suggest that 1E 1048.1-5937 may be a transition object between the soft gamma-ray repeater and AXP populations, and the AXP most likely to one day undergo an outburst.Comment: 6 pages, to appear in Proceedings of the 20th Texas Symposium on Relativistic Astrophysics, AIP pres

Assertion, Uniqueness and Epistemic Hypocrisy

Pascal Engel (2008) has insisted that a number of notable strategies for rejecting the knowledge norm of assertion are put forward on the basis of the wrong kinds of reasons. A central aim of this paper will be to establish the contrast point: I argue that one very familiar strategy for defending the knowledge norm of assertion—viz., that it is claimed to do better in various respects than its competitors (e.g. the justification and the truth norms)— relies on a presupposition that is shown to be ultimately under motivated. That presupposition is the uniqueness thesis—that there is a unique epistemic rule for assertion, and that such a rule will govern assertions uniformly. In particular, the strategy I shall take here will be to challenge the sufficiency leg of the knowledge norm in a way that at the same time counts against Williamson’s (2000) own rationale for the uniqueness thesis. However, rather than to challenge the sufficiency leg of the knowledge norm via the familiar style of ‘expert opinion’ and, more generally, ‘second-hand knowledge’ cases (e.g. Lackey (2008)), a strategy that has recently been called into question by Benton (2014), I’ll instead advance a very different line of argument against the sufficiency thesis, one which turns on a phenomenon I call epistemic hypocrisy

Note and Comment

The Law School -As a result of the increased requirements for admission, which are now in their second year of operation, the attendance at the Law School is less than that of last year, though the decrease is less than was anticipated at the time of the adoption of the higher requirements. The entering class (the second, under the new standard) is about thirty larger than that of last year. There are no changes in the teaching staff, and none of great importance in the curriculum