At the Water's Edge: Fighting Poaching on Sacred Landscapes

I would like to thank Dr. Lisa Lucero for her leadership and guidance.The 25 Cara Blanca pools in central Belize are home to ancient Maya ceremonial sites that were visited during the Terminal Classic droughts (700-900 CE). Owned by a sustainable logging company, the land is closely monitored. The rich cultural history and diverse natural ecology of the pools put them in particular danger of looting— for artifacts, for fish, for lumber. The Valley of Peace Archaeology team works at these pools every summer to record archaeological contexts before they are destroyed or removed. In the process, we have surveyed each pool to record changes in ecological condition. During our 2017 summer field season, we macheted through dense jungle to reach the last of the pools, Pool 25, captured here by drone. Unfortunately, a fire had recently been ignited by poachers and the only remaining green was on the pool's boundary, saved by the inundated landscape. This photograph acts as a compelling argument in our quest to further protect and monitor the Cara Blanca landscape.Ope

A Policy Examination of Digital Multimedia Evidence in Police Department Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

2020 will be a year forever marked by the Covid-19 pandemic. The year will also be remembered for the death of George Floyd at the hands of police officer Derek Chauvin. The death was recorded by a bystander’s cell phone and broadcast all over the world to see. This video proved pivotal in the prosecution and conviction of Chauvin for Floyd’s death. The video provided powerful evidence highlighting the importance of incorporating video evidence into the investigation and prosecution of crime. Today, police use a variety of video evidence to assist in their investigations. In some cases, it may be a small part of the case whereas in others it may provide vital evidence. There has been an explosion in the number of video sources where police can now gather evidence. Cellphone videos, private security cameras on homes or businesses, social media postings, and police body cameras all provide possible evidence that must be collected, extracted and analyzed. In 2019, there were 40 million professionally installed video recording systems and 224 million smartphones in the U.S. alone. Along with the approximately 400,000 body cameras worldwide, there is a numerous amount of video available to investigators. It is important for police departments to acquire this video evidence according to legal requirements and best practices according to industry leaders to avoid any future legal challenges to the evidence. This study will analyze how police departments around the country are handling video evidence through their Standing Operating Procedures (SOPs) using legal requirements and industry best practices as a guideline. The author chose to concentrate on two of the main legal challenges facing law enforcement today while working with digital evidence: authentication and integrity. Despite sometimes being used interchangeably, authentication and integrity present two different challenges when working with digital evidence. Authentication is when the evidence put forth in a trial is what the party admitting it into evidence claims it to be. Integrity is ensuring the evidence has not been changed or altered since its original form. In this study, the author chose to concentrate on the issues of authentication and integrity specifically in relation to Digital Multimedia Evidence (DME). DME is information of probative value stored in binary form including but not limited to tape, film, magnetic, optical media, and/or the information contained therein. The author created a rubric utilizing best practices identified by industry leaders along with legal guidelines set forth by the Federal Rules of Evidence, court cases, and law reviews. The rubric evaluated the Department’s SOPs on three phases: Training, Process, and Documentation

Using Retrospective Miscue Analysis to Nurture Metacognition in Young Children

This qualitative study explores the effects of introducing Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) into a reading group comprised of elementary students who are struggling readers. It examines how RMA discussions are related to the field of metacognition and metacognitive awareness in students. Metacognition has been found to have significant impact on students’ memory, knowledge of reading and mathematics strategies, and perseverance. Periodical surveys of both the students and their teacher along with audio recordings of RMA discussions within the reading group were used to analyze how RMA discussions would affect the mindfulness and conversational behaviors of the young struggling readers.SUNY BrockportEducation and Human DevelopmentMaster of Science in Education (MSEd)Education and Human Development Master's These

Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics

In Suspect Saints and Holy Heretics Janine Larmon Peterson investigates regional saints whose holiness was contested. She scrutinizes the papacy's toleration of unofficial saints' cults and its response when their devotees challenged church authority about a cult's merits or the saint's orthodoxy. As she demonstrates, communities that venerated saints increasingly clashed with popes and inquisitors determined to erode any local claims of religious authority. Local and unsanctioned saints were spiritual and social fixtures in the towns of northern and central Italy in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In some cases, popes allowed these saints' cults; in others, church officials condemned the saint and/or their followers as heretics. Using a wide range of secular and clerical sources—including vitae, inquisitorial and canonization records, chronicles, and civic statutes—Peterson explores who these unofficial saints were, how the phenomenon of disputed sanctity arose, and why communities would be willing to risk punishment by continuing to venerate a local holy man or woman. She argues that the Church increasingly restricted sanctification in the later Middle Ages, which precipitated new debates over who had the authority to recognize sainthood and what evidence should be used to identify holiness and heterodoxy. The case studies she presents detail how the political climate of the Italian peninsula allowed Italian communities to use saints' cults as a tool to negotiate religious and political autonomy in opposition to growing papal bureaucratization

Using Retrospective Miscue Analysis to Nurture Metacognition in Young Children

This qualitative study explores the effects of introducing Retrospective Miscue Analysis (RMA) into a reading group comprised of elementary students who are struggling readers. It examines how RMA discussions are related to the field of metacognition and metacognitive awareness in students. Metacognition has been found to have significant impact on students’ memory, knowledge of reading and mathematics strategies, and perseverance. Periodical surveys of both the students and their teacher along with audio recordings of RMA discussions within the reading group were used to analyze how RMA discussions would affect the mindfulness and conversational behaviors of the young struggling readers

Which method is best for the induction of labour?: A systematic review, network meta-analysis and cost-effectiveness analysis

Background: More than 150,000 pregnant women in England and Wales have their labour induced each year. Multiple pharmacological, mechanical and complementary methods are available to induce labour. Objective: To assess the relative effectiveness, safety and cost-effectiveness of labour induction methods and, data permitting, effects in different clinical subgroups. Methods: We carried out a systematic review using Cochrane methods. The Cochrane Pregnancy and Childbirth Group’s Trials Register was searched (March 2014). This contains over 22,000 reports of controlled trials (published from 1923 onwards) retrieved from weekly searches of OVID MEDLINE (1966 to current); Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (The Cochrane Library); EMBASE (1982 to current); Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature (1984 to current); ClinicalTrials.gov; the World Health Organization International Clinical Trials Registry Portal; and hand-searching of relevant conference proceedings and journals. We included randomised controlled trials examining interventions to induce labour compared with placebo, no treatment or other interventions in women eligible for third-trimester induction. We included outcomes relating to efficacy, safety and acceptability to women. In addition, for the economic analysis we searched the Database of Abstracts of Reviews of Effects, and Economic Evaluations Databases, NHS Economic Evaluation Database and the Health Technology Assessment database. We carried out a network meta-analysis (NMA) using all of the available evidence, both direct and indirect, to produce estimates of the relative effects of each treatment compared with others in a network. We developed a de novo decision tree model to estimate the cost-effectiveness of various methods. The costs included were the intervention and other hospital costs incurred (price year 2012–13). We reviewed the literature to identify preference-based utilities for the health-related outcomes in the model. We calculated incremental cost-effectiveness ratios, expected costs, utilities and net benefit. We represent uncertainty in the optimal intervention using cost-effectiveness acceptability curves. Results: We identified 1190 studies; 611 were eligible for inclusion. The interventions most likely to achieve vaginal delivery (VD) within 24 hours were intravenous oxytocin with amniotomy [posterior rank 2; 95% credible intervals (CrIs) 1 to 9] and higher-dose (≥ 50 μg) vaginal misoprostol (rank 3; 95% CrI 1 to 6). Compared with placebo, several treatments reduced the odds of caesarean section, but we observed considerable uncertainty in treatment rankings. For uterine hyperstimulation, double-balloon catheter had the highest probability of being among the best three treatments, whereas vaginal misoprostol (≥ 50 μg) was most likely to increase the odds of excessive uterine activity. For other safety outcomes there were insufficient data or there was too much uncertainty to identify which treatments performed ‘best’. Few studies collected information on women’s views. Owing to incomplete reporting of the VD within 24 hours outcome, the cost-effectiveness analysis could compare only 20 interventions. The analysis suggested that most interventions have similar utility and differ mainly in cost. With a caveat of considerable uncertainty, titrated (low-dose) misoprostol solution and buccal/sublingual misoprostol had the highest likelihood of being cost-effective. Limitations: There was considerable uncertainty in findings and there were insufficient data for some planned subgroup analyses. Conclusions: Overall, misoprostol and oxytocin with amniotomy (for women with favourable cervix) is more successful than other agents in achieving VD within 24 hours. The ranking according to safety of different methods was less clear. The cost-effectiveness analysis suggested that titrated (low-dose) oral misoprostol solution resulted in the highest utility, whereas buccal/sublingual misoprostol had the lowest cost. There was a high degree of uncertainty as to the most cost-effective intervention