Native Bee Watch: assessing the efficacy of a citizen science project monitoring native bees in Fort Collins, Colorado

2018 Summer.Includes bibliographical references.As the world's human population continues to grow, urban areas continue to expand, and natural spaces become more fragmented leading to dilution and loss of natural resources. Of the organisms that depend on natural resources, pollinators could face significant impacts including habitat loss, fragmentation, and deterioration. Pollinators provide substantial ecosystem services such as plant reproduction and food production for human and animals. However, urban areas are rapidly expanding and understanding its impact on insects, such as bees, is critical. One method to understand the effects of urbanization on ecosystems is to involve urban residents in exploring the components of the ecosystem around them by engaging, educating, and empowering urbanites through citizen science. Citizen science is defined as involving non-scientists in collecting data for a scientific or research project and many times contribute to a large database. Scientists are capitalizing on citizen scientist availability and enthusiasm to increase capacity, address funding shortcomings for research and satisfy the need to meet an outreach-related component. Data accuracy is one of the main concerns that scientists have with citizen science programs. Several studies have assessed the quality of citizen science data to comprehend the underlying problems and devise effective future protocols. However, the consensus is that researchers do not yet fully understand the error potential in citizen science data possibly because data accuracy does not have a reliable definition and there are few consistent metrics on data accuracy. Knowing that pollinator conservation is an attractive issue for urban citizens, and recognizing the hurdles encountered with citizen science data, we launched Native Bee Watch, a citizen science project on urban pollinators in Fort Collins, Colorado, USA, specifically to determine whether citizen scientists can collect accurate data on native bees and develop a protocol that yields accurate data. Three gardens were monitored from the last week of May through mid-September in 2016 and in 2017. Citizen scientists completed a two-hour training and spent time with the researchers in the field to ensure data accuracy. Data was collected by using the Focal Plant Sampling Procedure that was modified from animal behavior studies. Citizen science data was compared with data collected by professional researchers. Both used the exact same methods to collect data. Spearman's Rank Correlation was used to compare the citizen science data and the researcher-only data. An Urban Bee Habitat Quality index was obtained by multiplying rarified morphospecies estimate with abundance for each sampling period to determine the habitat quality using eight morphological groups of bees. Results show citizen science data was comparable to the researcher-only data. Spearman's Rank Correlation coefficients ranged 0.88 to 0.98 indicating a strong correlation between citizen science and researcher data. The habitat quality of citizen science data and the habitat quality of researcher data was not significantly different. The results indicate that the training protocols for citizen scientists were effective in having them collect comparable data to researchers. The Urban Bee Habitat Quality Index demonstrates that data collected by citizen scientists at a broad-level such as morphological categories can be used to evaluate habitat quality. Part of the training protocol for citizen scientists was continuous volunteer engagement through trainings, newsletters, and researchers working individually with citizen scientists. Results suggest the training protocols in this study were effective since the data collected by citizen scientists was significantly comparable to researcher data, indicating that citizen science can be a valuable tool to monitor native bees at a broad scale in urban areas

Validity of Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT)

Sports concussions have been recognized as significant injuries among young athletes with research demonstrating that return-to-play prior to becoming asymptomatic can have significant repercussions, including risk of sustaining cognitive deficits. In tracking and monitoring concussions during sports seasons, many programs have begun utilizing computerized testing rather than traditional neuropsychological tests to 1) determine baseline scores, 2) track symptoms, and 3) measure cognitive deficits following concussion. Immediate Post-Concussion Assessment and Cognitive Testing (ImPACT) is one such instrument. The current study examined ImPACT’s convergent, discriminant, and diagnostic validity by comparing scores from post-concussion athletes (SPORT) to those from non-concussed controls (CONT). SPORT included 29 athletes, ages 12-16, referred for neuropsychological testing following sports-related concussions. CONT included 25 healthy athletes, ages 12-16, who had not sustained a concussion in the past year. Overall, results showed general support for ImPACT, when used to screen cognition. In fact, all ImPACT domains successfully differentiated between CONT and SPORT athletes; evidence supporting appropriate convergent validity was best for the Visual Memory domain. ImPACT domains demonstrated variable discriminant validity. Overall examination of validity demonstrated that ImPACT has some weaknesses but may have utility in detecting post-concussion cognitive impairment

Gender and Asset Dimensions of Seasonal Water Insecurity in Urban Philippines

Seasonal water insecurity is a social and climate-related problem of growing concern in many urban areas. From 2000 to 2050, the global urban population affected by seasonal water shortage is projected to increase from 312 million to 1.3 billion. This increase is due to a combination of drivers, including population growth, urbanization, and climate change. To advance understanding of the social dimensions of this problem, this study uses qualitative methods—archival research, informal interviews (N=7), and in-depth interviews (N=15)—to explore how gender and assets relate to water insecurity in the rainy and dry seasons in three urban neighborhoods in Baguio City, the Philippines. Analytic methods include memo production and qualitative text analysis. Key findings are that households manage complex water portfolios that change seasonally or more frequently; women and men have gendered roles in managing water portfolios, providing versus managing income for water purchases, and physically carrying water; and particular forms of physical, financial, and social assets seem to matter for reducing seasonal water insecurity in ways that may be gendered as well. Implications for more gender-sensitive and asset-focused research and policy are discussed

Seasonal Water Insecurity in Urban Philippines: Examining the Role of Gender, Resources, and Context

Seasonal water insecurity is a complex problem of growing concern in many urban areas, due in part to urbanization, population growth, and environmental change. Using multiple research methods, this study documents the extent and nature of seasonal water insecurity among and within households in an urban neighborhood in Baguio City, the Philippines. This study also examines how individual and household factors--gender and financial, physical, and social resources--and contextual factors may relate to water insecurity by season. Data collection methods include archival research, informal interviews, randomly-sampled household surveys: N=396), randomly-sampled individual subsurveys: N=291), and in-depth interviews: N=18). This study conceptualizes and measures water insecurity along three dimensions: quantity, quality, and accessibility of water for everyday household and individual use. Key findings are that water insecurity varies widely among households in the study neighborhood, and to some extent, within households. These differences are more pronounced in the dry than rainy season. Household financial and physical resources are associated with some dimensions of water insecurity, also with seasonal variation. In general, quantitative methods in this study find few associations between water insecurity and gender or household social resources; relationships among these variables are found, however, using qualitative methods. Neighborhood and municipal factors such as geography, water utility characteristics, and population and environment trends are discussed. This study contributes an important documentation of the heterogeneities in water insecurity that exist among a population and which are often masked by municipal, regional, and national statistics. Study findings also have implications for programs and policies designed to bolster the factors associated with reduced water insecurity by season--in urban areas of the Philippines, and in other countries expecting to experience seasonal water insecurity for the first time or to a greater extent than in the past

Environment and Social Development

Global environmental changes—such as pollution, climate change, biodiversity loss, and freshwater decline—affect people worldwide, with impacts that are not just physical, but also social and economic. Consequences range from minor inconvenience to injury and death, and can include food and water insecurity, mental distress, family separation, income disruption, and asset depletion. a social justice issue, environmental change has consequences that are typically worse for some groups than others. The Environment and Social Development initiative examines social vulnerability and strategies for social action and adaptation to environmental change. We emphasize social action that leads to reductions in negative environmental problems and adaptation through formal programs and policies designed to reduce vulnerability to environmental change. Through this work, Environment and Social Development aims to contribute to a more environmentally sustainable world, in which all people have fair and optimal opportunities to live full, healthy, and productive lives

Senior Recital: Lisa Mason, oboe

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Music Education. Ms. Mason studies oboe with Elizabeth Tiscione.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1292/thumbnail.jp

State Policy Trends for Individual Development Accounts in the United States: 1993–2003

State Policy Trends for Individual Development Accounts in the United States: 1993–200

General Analysis of Antideuteron Searches for Dark Matter

Low energy cosmic ray antideuterons provide a unique low background channel for indirect detection of dark matter. We compute the cosmic ray flux of antideuterons from hadronic annihilations of dark matter for various Standard Model final states and determine the mass reach of two future experiments (AMS-02 and GAPS) designed to greatly increase the sensitivity of antideuteron detection over current bounds. We consider generic models of scalar, fermion, and massive vector bosons as thermal dark matter, describe their basic features relevant to direct and indirect detection, and discuss the implications of direct detection bounds on models of dark matter as a thermal relic. We also consider specific dark matter candidates and assess their potential for detection via antideuterons from their hadronic annihilation channels. Since the dark matter mass reach of the GAPS experiment can be well above 100 GeV, we find that antideuterons can be a good indirect detection channel for a variety of thermal relic electroweak scale dark matter candidates, even when the rate for direct detection is highly suppressed.Physic

Sensitivity of Seasonal Climate Forecasts to Persisted SST Anomalies

Most estimates of the skill of atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs) for forecasting seasonal climate anomalies have been based on simulations with actual observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) as lower boundary forcing. Similarly estimates of the climatological response characteristics of AGCMs used for seasonal-to-interannual climate prediction frequently rest on historical simulations using "perfect" SST forecasts. This paper examines the errors and biases introduced into the seasonal climate response of an AGCM forced with persisted SST anomalies, which are generally considered to constitute a good prediction of SST in the first 3-month season. However, the added uncertainty introduced by the predicted SST anomalies weakens, and in some cases nullifies, the skill of atmospheric predictions that is possible given perfect SST forcing. The use of persisted SST anomalies also leads to changes in local signal-to-noise characteristics. Thus, it is argued that seasonal-to-interannual forecasts using AGCMs should be interpreted relative to historical runs that were subject to the same strategy of boundary forcing used in the current forecast in order to properly account for errors and biases introduced by the particular SST prediction strategy. Two case studies are examined to illustrate how the sensitivity of the climate response to predicted SSTs may be used as a diagnostic to suggest improvements to the predicted SSTs

Philharmonic and Concert Band

KSU School of Music presents Philharmonic and Concert Band.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1316/thumbnail.jp