Missed Opportunities: The Need for Landmine Survivor Rehabilitation in Rural Areas

Persons with disabilities in developing countries are regarded by their own communities as the most disadvantaged, yet poverty alleviation and international aid programs have consistently failed to prioritize their rehabilitation and integration into society. Within the scope of mine action (landmine removal, victim assistance and mine risk education), landmine survivor assistance receives only five percent of all humanitarian mine action funding. Persons with disabilities, whether their disabilities were caused by war, agricultural or industrial accidents, diabetes, infection or other causes, are often ignored

The Iowa State University FAPRI Trade Model

International Relations/Trade,

Television and video game violence: age differences and the combined effects of passive and interactive violent media

The present research examined the combined effects of violent video games and violent TV programs on third and sixth-grade boys’ thoughts and behavior. In individual sessions, demographic information about the children’s television viewing and video game playing habits was collected. Participants were exposed to one of six following media conditions for 15 minutes; a) watch a violent (wrestling) or a non-violent video segment (basketball), b) play a violent or a non-violent game, or c) watch a violent or non-violent video segment and then play a video game containing the same characters and content. The potential for violent media to prime aggression was examined by utilizing two cognitive (word-stem completion task and normative beliefs about aggression questionnaire) and one behavioral measure (Bobo doll interaction). Exposure to violent media was expected to lead to increased aggressive thoughts and behaviors in both younger and older children. Younger children were expected to be more strongly influenced by violent media than older children. However, older boys were expected to demonstrate greater priming on the word-completion task. Finally, consistent with Huesmann’s (1986) social developmental theory, the combination of violent video games and violent television content was expected influence children more strongly than either video games or television alone. Key findings of the present research were as follows: 1) Children exposed to violent media content endorsed higher levels of aggressive behavior than did children exposed to non-violent content. 2) Children exposed to violence in the combined media condition endorsed significantly higher levels of aggressive behavior than did those in the non-violent media condition. 3) Sixth-grade boys endorsed higher levels of aggressive behavior and produced more aggressive words on the word-stem completion task than did third-grade boys. 4) Third-grade boys were more aggressive toward the Bobo doll than were sixth-grade boys

Signal Decomposition Using Masked Proximal Operators

We consider the well-studied problem of decomposing a vector time series signal into components with different characteristics, such as smooth, periodic, nonnegative, or sparse. We describe a simple and general framework in which the components are defined by loss functions (which include constraints), and the signal decomposition is carried out by minimizing the sum of losses of the components (subject to the constraints). When each loss function is the negative log-likelihood of a density for the signal component, this framework coincides with maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) estimation; but it also includes many other interesting cases. Summarizing and clarifying prior results, we give two distributed optimization methods for computing the decomposition, which find the optimal decomposition when the component class loss functions are convex, and are good heuristics when they are not. Both methods require only the masked proximal operator of each of the component loss functions, a generalization of the well-known proximal operator that handles missing entries in its argument. Both methods are distributed, i.e., handle each component separately. We derive tractable methods for evaluating the masked proximal operators of some loss functions that, to our knowledge, have not appeared in the literature.Comment: The manuscript has 61 pages, 22 figures and 2 tables. Also hosted at https://web.stanford.edu/~boyd/papers/sig_decomp_mprox.html. For code, see https://github.com/cvxgrp/signal-decompositio

Tolerance of peppermint to tiafenacil applied postharvest

Trials were conducted in two experimental runs at the Purdue University Horticulture Greenhouses, West Lafayette, IN, to determine ‘Redefined Murray Mitcham’ peppermint tolerance to tiafenacil. Established peppermint in 20-cm-diameter polyethylene pots was subjected to a simulated harvest by removing aboveground biomass at the substrate surface; then, tiafenacil was applied at 0, 25, 50, 100, and 200 g ai ha−1. Visible crop injury, height, and aboveground dry biomass data were subjected to regression analysis to generate predictive models. At 2 wk after treatment (WAT), peppermint injury increased from 63% to 86% and from 25% to 76% in Experimental Run 1 and 2, respectively, as tiafenacil rate increased from 25 to 200 g ha−1. At 4 WAT, injury increased from 0% to 63% and from 4% to 37% in Experimental Run 1 and 2, respectively, as tiafenacil rate increased from 25 to 200 g ha−1. By 7 WAT (both experimental runs), injury increased from 0% to 17% as tiafenacil rate increased from 25 to 200 g ha−1. At 4 WAT, height decreased from 23.0 to 8.6 cm and from 17.6 to 10.3 cm in Experimental Run 1 and 2, respectively, as tiafenacil rate increased from 0 to 200 g ha−1. At 7 WAT, height decreased from 28.1 to 21.4 cm as tiafenacil rate increased from 0 to 200 g ha−1. Aboveground dry weight of the nontreated check was 20.3 g pot−1 and decreased from 19.3 to 7.0 g pot−1 as tiafenacil rate increased from 25 to 200 g ha−1. Despite acute necrosis, injury from tiafenacil at lower rates was not persistent. The proposed 1X rate of tiafenacil for peppermint, 25 g ha−1, resulted in ≤4% injury 4 and 7 WAT and in only a 3% reduction in plant height and a 4.7% reduction in aboveground dry weight compared to the nontreated check

Internships: The Nuts And Bolts Of An Effective Program

Braxston Public Engineering and Consulting Group (BPECG) is a nationally known and respected company that is magnate for students who wish to receive a valued internship experience.   Under the able direction of Amy Greene, the work experiences were coordinated during the summer and interns were well paid for their contributions.  The case study chronicles the trials and tribulations faced by a competent, highly energized engineering intern who faces the malaise of an organization that is unprepared to provide a valid learning experience. As the case unfolds, Greene has an Eureka experience and learns from a colleague how interns can and do make vital contributions (ROI’s) to their assigned organizations. Upon reviewing the contributions that interns made in three organizations, she redesigns Braxston’s Internship program, reviews the State University Intern to Work Program that addresses, among many other factors, the internship purpose, supervision, learning objectives,  and intern and employer obligations.  The case includes an Intern Evaluation form and a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the university and the company. Last, the Questions and Instructions provide for focused discussion and analysis and the references enable learners to research the top internship programs in the United States

Dose-response of two Jack O’Lantern pumpkin cultivars to fomesafen applied preemergence

Three dose-response trials were performed in 2020 and 2021 to determine the tolerance of two Jack O’Lantern pumpkin cultivars to fomesafen applied preemergence at two Indiana locations: the Southwest Purdue Agricultural Center (SWPAC) and the Pinney Purdue Agricultural Center (PPAC). The experiment was a split-plot arrangement in which the main plot was the fomesafen rate of application (0, 280, 560, 840, and 1,220 g ai ha–1), and the subplot was the pumpkin cultivar (‘Bayhorse Gold’ and ‘Carbonado Gold’). As the fomesafen rate increased from 280 to 1,120 g ha–1, the predicted pumpkin emergence decreased from 85% to 25% of the nontreated control at SWPAC-2020, but only from 99% to 74% at both locations in 2021. The severe impact on emergence at SWPAC-2020 was attributed to rainfall. Visible injury included bleaching and chlorosis due to the herbicide splashing from the soil surface onto the leaves and included stunting, but injury was transient. As the fomesafen rate increased from 280 to 1,120 g ha–1, the predicted marketable orange pumpkin yield decreased from 95% to 24% of the nontreated control at SWPAC-2020 and 98% to 74% at PPAC-2021. Similarly, the predicted marketable orange pumpkin fruit number decreased from 94% to 21% at SWPAC-2020 and 98% to 74% at PPAC-2021. Fomesafen rate did not affect marketable orange pumpkin yield and fruit number at SWPAC-2021 and marketable orange pumpkin fruit weight at any location-year. Overall, the fomesafen rate of 280 g ha–1 was safe for use preemergence in the pumpkin cultivars ‘Bayhorse Gold’ and ‘Carbonado Gold’ within one day after planting, but there is a risk of increased crop injury with increasing rainfall

Interference of morningglories (Ipomoea spp.) with ‘Fascination’ triploid watermelon

Morningglories (Ipomoea spp.) are among the most troublesome weeds in cucurbits in the United States; however, little is known about Ipomoea spp. interference with horticultural crops. Two additive design field studies were conducted in 2020 at two locations in Indiana to investigate the interference of ivyleaf morningglory (Ipomoea hederacea Jacq.), entireleaf morningglory (Ipomoea hederacea Jacq. var. integriuscula A. Gray.), and pitted morningglory (Ipomoea lacunosa L.) with triploid watermelon [Citrullus lanatus (Thunb.) Matsum. & Nakai]. Immediately after watermelon was transplanted, Ipomoea spp. seedlings were transplanted into the watermelon planting holes at densities of 0 (weed-free control), 3, 6, 12, 18, and 24 plants 27 m−2. Fruit was harvested once a week for 4 wk, and each fruit was classified as marketable (≥4 kg) or non-marketable (\u3c4 kg). At 1 wk after the final harvest, aboveground biomass samples were collected from 1 m2 per plot and oven-dried to obtain watermelon and Ipomoea spp. dry weight. Seed capsules and the number of seeds in 15 capsules were counted from the biomass sample to estimate seed production. Ipomoea spp. densities increasing from 3 to 24 plants 27 m−2 increased marketable watermelon yield loss from 58% to 99%, reduced marketable watermelon fruit number 49% to 98%, reduced individual watermelon fruit weight 17% to 45%, and reduced watermelon aboveground biomass 83% to 94%. Ipomoea spp. seed production ranged from 549 to 7,746 seeds m−2, greatly increasing the weed seedbank. Ipomoea spp. hindered harvest due to their vines wrapping around watermelon fruits. The most likely reason for watermelon yield loss was interference with light and consequently less dry matter being partitioned into fruit development due to less photosynthesis. Yield loss was attributed to fewer fruits and the weight of each fruit