Evaluation of Heat Stress in Migrant Farmworkers

The rate of heat-related fatalities in crop production workers is almost 20 times that of other industries. Heat stress was investigated in migrant tomato workers in July, 2012, using measurements of body temperature, heart rates, body weight loss, evaluation of the thermal environment, and survey data. Using occupational safety criteria, these workers were found to work in an environment that should require protective measures to prevent heat strain. Increases in body temperature, heart rate, and physiological strain correlated with heat exposure. One third of workers had body weight percentage losses that indicated dehydration. However, working in hot environments appears to elicit a low magnitude of strain in well acclimated workers who self-pace. Key findings suggest the need for worker and employer safety training regarding acclimation and hydration. Survey data showed that less than 30% have had any heat-related safety training

Factors and processes influencing streambank erosion along Horseshoe Run in Tucker County, West Virginia

Factors and processes influencing streambank erosion are not fully understood and combining factors and processes into a model that predicts streambank erosion is difficult. The mechanistic Bank Stability and Toe Erosion Model (BSTEM) and the empirical Bank Assessment of Nonpoint Source Consequences of Sediment (BANCS) model were evaluated to determine their effectiveness at predicting or explaining streambank erosion along Horseshoe Run. BSTEM underpredicted erosion by between 60 and 75%, but the model was able to provide relative estimates of eroded material and was also able to predict the type of erosion present at most bank sites. Model validation revealed critical shear stress of the bed material to be locally specific and non transferable to neighboring sites on the same stream. The input parameters for the BANCS model may be used to explain the susceptibility of a streambank to erosion. However, careful consideration needs to be given when using streambank and near bank characteristics to predict relative erosion on sections of the same stream with different morphology and potentially different dominant erosional processes. When the streambank parameters were used to group sites independently of erosion, a group of streambanks with moderate rooting depths and densities, low bank angles, and surface protection emerged. This group experienced the least amount of erosion. Regression analysis showed that for noncohesive restored banks that were vulnerable to fluvial erosion, bank angle, bank height, and vegetation parameters were needed to predict susceptibility to erosion. Alternatively, for cohesive banks with non-cohesive bank toe material that were vulnerable to fluvial erosion and mass failure, bank angle, bank material, and near bank depth ratios with an emphasis on bank angle were sufficient parameters to predict susceptibility

Michigan\u27s Religious Exemption for Faith-Based Adoption Agencies: State-Sanctioned Discrimination or Guardian of Religious Liberty?

Historically, most of the legal obstacles faced by gay couples hoping to expand their families through adoption stemmed from prohibitions on marriage. That was until Obergefell. Barriers to same-sex adoption have been steadily falling over the past decade, and, in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, married couples are now able to adopt in every state. However, there remains one pressing barrier to adoption for same-sex couples: “conscience clause” adoption laws enacted to allow faith-based adoption agencies to turn away prospective parents whose sexuality conflicts with their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” Though Ms. DeBoer and Ms. Rowse successfully broke down the walls inhibiting their own ability to adopt, their home state of Michigan is one of seven states that have successfully enacted this modern barrier to adoption. Just days before the Supreme Court’s Obergefell decision, Michigan Governor Rick Snyder signed three bills into law that allow adoption agencies to decline services to same-sex couples on religious grounds. This Note, in Part I, will begin with an overview of domestic adoption and an explanation of the most significant barriers same-sex couples hoping to adopt have traditionally faced. Part II will explore the falling barriers to same-sex adoption both before and after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Obergefell. In Part III, this Note will discuss the Obergefell decision and the case’s immediate aftermath. Part IV will look at Boston, San Francisco, Washington, D.C., and Illinois, four jurisdictions where legislatures intentionally chose not to enact religious exemptions and faith-based adoption agencies closed their doors. Part V will go on to describe Michigan’s religious exemption for faith-based adoption agencies, the justifications offered in support of the new law, and the arguments against it. Finally, Part VI will analyze whether a viable challenge to Michigan’s conscience clause exemption exists. Though it would undeniably be in the best interest of children to open all possible avenues to adoption, this Note will argue that challenges to Michigan’s religious exemption for adoption agencies will fail. First and foremost, the new law is not discriminatory on its face, and there is not a federal or state law on which prospective plaintiffs could base their claim. Further, potential plaintiffs would have no caselaw to support an argument that they have a fundamental right to adopt a child. Finally, Michigan maintains the authority to regulate its adoption agencies and it had the power to enact this exemption under the First Amendment and its state constitution

Analyses of Two End-User Software Vulnerability Exposure Metrics

The risk due to software vulnerabilities will not be completely resolved in the near future. Instead, putting reliable vulnerability measures into the hands of end-users so that informed decisions can be made regarding the relative security exposure incurred by choosing one software package over another is of importance. To that end, we propose two new security metrics, average active vulnerabilities (AAV) and vulnerability free days (VFD). These metrics capture both the speed with which new vulnerabilities are reported to vendors and the rate at which software vendors fix them. We then examine how the metrics are computed using currently available datasets and demonstrate their estimation in a simulation experiment using four different browsers as a case study. Finally, we discuss how the metrics may be used by the various stakeholders of software and to software usage decisions

Ballistic magnon heat conduction and possible Poiseuille flow in the helimagnetic insulator Cu2_2OSeO3_3

We report on the observation of magnon thermal conductivity $\kappa_m\sim$ 70 W/mK near 5 K in the helimagnetic insulator Cu$_2$OSeO$_3$, exceeding that measured in any other ferromagnet by almost two orders of magnitude. Ballistic, boundary-limited transport for both magnons and phonons is established below 1 K, and Poiseuille flow of magnons is proposed to explain a magnon mean-free path substantially exceeding the specimen width for the least defective specimens in the range 2 K $<T<$ 10 K. These observations establish Cu$_2$OSeO$_3$ as a model system for studying long-wavelength magnon dynamics.Comment: 10pp, 9 figures, accepted PRB (Editor's Suggestion

Transfer from implicit to explicit phonological abilities in first and second language learners

Children's abilities to process the phonological structure of words are important predictors of their literacy development. In the current study, we examined the interrelatedness between implicit (i.e., speech decoding) and explicit (i.e., phonological awareness) phonological abilities, and especially the role therein of lexical specificity (i.e., the ability to learn to recognize spoken words based on only minimal acoustic-phonetic differences). We tested 75 Dutch monolingual and 64 Turkish–Dutch bilingual kindergartners. SEM analyses showed that speech decoding predicted lexical specificity, which in turn predicted rhyme awareness in the first language learners but phoneme awareness in the second language learners. Moreover, in the latter group there was an impact of the second language: Dutch speech decoding and lexical specificity predicted Turkish phonological awareness, which in turn predicted Dutch phonological awareness. We conclude that language-specific phonological characteristics underlie different patterns of transfer from implicit to explicit phonological abilities in first and second language learners