A RELATIVE EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF FARMLAND PRESERVATION PROGRAMS

While agricultural land preservation programs seek to maximize number of acres, to preserve productive farms, to preserve contiguous farms, and to preserve threatened farms, they are often evaluated solely on the number of acres preserved. Using a Farrell efficiency analysis, preserved parcels in four Maryland counties were evaluated for all four goals. Comparisons are made between program Econometric analysis used these efficiency measures as dependent variables. Parcel size and productive farms were the most frequently used criteria to determine efficiency. In addition, purchase of development right programs were most successful in trading off objectives.Land Economics/Use,

Critical Perspectives on Undergraduate Black Women

This project is one of reclamation, an attempt to explore and name Black undergraduate women’s experiences in higher education scholarship. As a Black queer trans person, Audre Lorde knew all too well the ways in which society defined Black women and the dangers associated with the confinement embedded in those definitions. Today, there are many fantasies about Black women in higher education that must be critically interrogated and examined to illuminate the complexities of our experiences across the higher education landscape. This project is one effort devoted to the interruption of epistemic violence enacted to silence, marginalize, and dehumanize Black women, particularly at the undergraduate level. Scholars and practitioners know little about the experiences of Black undergraduate women, and what is presumed to be known has in large part been constructed outside Black women’s communities, devoid of a critical lens, and treated as insignificant

A RELATIVE EFFICIENCY ANALYSIS OF FARMLAND PRESERVATION PROGRAMS

Using an inverted Farrell methodology, we analyze the relative efficiency of five agricultural land preservation programs in three counties of Maryland in achieving the stated goals of maximum acreage, threatened parcels, and productive farms. Regression analysis is then used to compare the programs both within and between counties.farmland preservation, efficiency analysis, Productivity Analysis, Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Nuclear Thermometers for Classical Novae

Classical novae are stellar explosions occurring in binary systems, consisting of a white dwarf and a main sequence companion. Thermonuclear runaways on the surface of massive white dwarfs, consisting of oxygen and neon, are believed to reach peak temperatures of several hundred million kelvin. These temperatures are strongly correlated with the underlying white dwarf mass. The observational counterparts of such models are likely associated with outbursts that show strong spectral lines of neon in their shells (neon novae). The goals of this work are to investigate how useful elemental abundances are for constraining the peak temperatures achieved during these outbursts and determine how robust "nova thermometers" are with respect to uncertain nuclear physics input. We present updated observed abundances in neon novae and perform a series of hydrodynamic simulations for several white dwarf masses. We find that the most useful thermometers, N/O, N/Al, O/S, S/Al, O/Na, Na/Al, O/P, and P/Al, are those with the steepest monotonic dependence on peak temperature. The sensitivity of these thermometers to thermonuclear reaction rate variations is explored using post-processing nucleosynthesis simulations. The ratios N/O, N/Al, O/Na, and Na/Al are robust, meaning they are minimally affected by uncertain rates. However, their dependence on peak temperature is relatively weak. The ratios O/S, S/Al, O/P, and P/Al reveal strong dependences on temperature and the poorly known 30P(p,g)31S rate. We compare our model predictions to neon nova observations and obtain the following estimates for the underlying white dwarf masses: 1.34-1.35 solar masses (V838 Her), 1.18-1.21 solar masses (V382 Vel), <1.3 solar masses (V693 CrA), <1.2 solar masses (LMC 1990#1), and <1.2 solar masses (QU Vul).Comment: 12 pages, 7 figures, accepted to Ap

The Time Is Now: A Call for Federal Elimination of Non-Competes Against Low-Wage and Hourly Workers in the Wake of the Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly impacted the United States’ labor market and has led to an economic recession. Millions of Americans lost their jobs as a result of the pandemic and were forced to apply for unemployment benefits. Consequently, many of these workers were confronted with the question of whether their existing non-compete agreements were enforceable. Not surprisingly, courts across the nation started seeing more pandemic-related litigation surfacing during the second part of 2020, related to employees seeking a declaration that these agreements were unenforceable. Prior to the pandemic, there was a rise in the use of noncompete agreements at all levels, including management-level employees and low-wage employees. To combat this, the federal government and several states have become increasingly critical of the use of non-competes. In fact, in July 2021, President Biden issued an Executive Order urging the FTC to curtail employers’ use of unreasonable noncompetition agreements. This Article argues that it is even more critical in the wake of the pandemic for the federal government to ban non-compete agreements, particularly for low-wage and hourly workers. Many of the individuals who were terminated during the pandemic were lower-wage earners or hourly workers—individuals very likely in the most vulnerable financial positions—and enforcing noncompete agreements against them would unfairly restrain their ability to earn money. Recent job market changes, beginning in 2021, indicate that workers who generally work in low-wage jobs have seen an influx of job opportunities, and employers have struggled with filling these positions. The United States is currently in need of workers to rejoin the job market in order to help the economy rebound and grow. Thus, forcing non-compete agreements on low-wage or hourly workers in this pandemic era would be a disincentive to those workers regaining employment, and negatively impact the recovery of the economy

Making a Declaration: The Rise of Declaratory Judgment Actions and the Insurer as Regulator in the Fight to End Sex Trafficking in the Hotel Industry

“Let it not be said that I was silent when they needed me.” – William Wilberforc