Turning the Tide on Persistent Rural Poverty: Blueprint for a Path Forward

It is the goal of NeighborWorks America to make every place a community of opportunity. Unfortunately, some areas are being left behind more than others as our global and national economies continue to shift. Rural communities are among them. The people who have toiled in the coal mines of Kentucky and West Virginia, as well as in the paper and textile mills in Maine and western North Carolina, have not fared well in the changing economy. Likewise, the historically disenfranchised Native Americans in the Southwest, Latinos in the border colonias and the residents of the disaster-plagued Delta are struggling to survive. Our country needs to bring opportunity back to these regions and their people.Although rural America accounts for less than 20 percent of the country's overall population, 85 percent of persistent-poverty counties are outside of metro areas. Yet at the same time, there are so many examples of people and organizations doing good work; they just need support and the resources to go to scale. Special attention clearly is required, and that's why we formed the Rural Initiative

An Assessment of Civil Nuclear ‘Enabling’ and ‘Amelioration’ Factors for EROI Analysis

Nuclear fission is a primary energy source that may be important to future efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The energy return on investment (EROI) of any energy source is important because aggregate global EROI must be maintained at a minimum level to support complex global systems. Previous studies considering nuclear EROI have emphasised energy investments linked to ‘enabling’ factors (upstream activities that enable the operation of nuclear technology such as fuel enrichment), have attracted controversy, and challenges also persist regarding system boundary definition. This study advocates that improved consideration of ‘amelioration’ factors (downstream activities that remediate nuclear externalities such as decommissioning), is an important task for calculating a realistic nuclear EROI. Components of the ‘nuclear system’ were analysed and energy investment for five representative ‘amelioration’ factors calculated. These ‘first approximation’ calculations made numerous assumptions, exclusions, and simplifications, but accounted for a greater level of detail than had previously been attempted. The amelioration energy costs were found to be approximately 1.5–2 orders of magnitude lower than representative ‘enabling’ costs. Future refinement of the ‘amelioration’ factors may indicate that they are of greater significance, and may also have characteristics making them systemically significant, notably in terms of timing in relation to future global EROI declines

Spatio-temporal influence of tundra snow properties on Ku-band (17.2 GHz) backscatter

During the 2010/11 boreal winter, a distributed set of backscatter measurements was collected using a ground-based Ku-band (17.2 GHz) scatterometer system at 26 open tundra sites. A standard snow-sampling procedure was completed after each scan to evaluate local variability in snow layering, depth, density and water equivalent (SWE) within the scatterometer field of view. The shallow depths and large basal depth hoar encountered presented an opportunity to evaluate backscatter under a set of previously untested conditions. Strong Ku-band response was found with increasing snow depth and snow water equivalent (SWE). In particular, co-polarized vertical backscatter increased by 0.82 dB for every 1 cm increase in SWE (R2 = 0.62). While the result indicated strong potential for Ku-band retrieval of shallow snow properties, it did not characterize the influence of sub-scan variability. An enhanced snow-sampling procedure was introduced to generate detailed characterizations of stratigraphy within the scatterometer field of view using near-infrared photography along the length of a 5m trench. Changes in snow properties along the trench were used to discuss variations in the collocated backscatter response. A pair of contrasting observation sites was used to highlight uncertainties in backscatter response related to short length scale spatial variability in the observed tundra environment

The impact of within-herd genetic variation upon inferred transmission trees for foot-and-mouth disease virus

Full-genome sequences have been used to monitor the fine-scale dynamics of epidemics caused by RNA viruses. However, the ability of this approach to confidently reconstruct transmission trees is limited by the knowledge of the genetic diversity of viruses that exist within different epidemiological units. In order to address this question, this study investigated the variability of 45 foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV) genome sequences (from 33 animals) that were collected during 2007 from eight premises (10 different herds) in the United Kingdom. Bayesian and statistical parsimony analysis demonstrated that these sequences exhibited clustering which was consistent with a transmission scenario describing herd-to-herd spread of the virus. As an alternative to analysing all of the available samples in future epidemics, the impact of randomly selecting one sequence from each of these herds was used to assess cost-effective methods that might be used to infer transmission trees during FMD outbreaks. Using these approaches, 85% and 91% of the resulting topologies were either identical or differed by only one edge from a reference tree comprising all of the sequences generated within the outbreak. The sequence distances that accrued during sequential transmission events between epidemiological units was estimated to be 4.6 nucleotides, although the genetic variability between viruses recovered from chronic carrier animals was higher than between viruses from animals with acute-stage infection: an observation which poses challenges for the use of simple approaches to infer transmission trees. This study helps to develop strategies for sampling during FMD outbreaks, and provides data that will guide the development of further models to support control policies in the event of virus incursions into FMD free countries

Food Rights for Real

Does more talk of the right to food and more action on food security amount to more accountability and effectiveness in tackling hunger? Not according to new findings from the Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility project. Research in 2013, published in the report 'Help Yourself! Food rights and responsibilities: Year 2 findings from Life in a Time of Food Price Volatility' found that while the drivers of food insecurity are increasingly beyond their control, people cannot rely on help when, how and for whom it is needed

Help Yourself! Food Rights and Responsibilities

The second year results of a four-year study on how food price volatility affects everyday life uncovers the grassroots realities of the right to food. Most societies have shared understandings of the rights and responsibilities around protection against hunger. Customary rights and responsibilities, patchy and uneven at the best of times, are affected by rapid changes in food prices and responses to them; becoming less effective buffers against the global drivers of food insecurity. People at risk of hunger are keenly receptive to state and civil society action that strengthens their sense of right to food, but formal responsibilities for action are often unclear and monitoring systems rarely capture local realities. Food security programmes are often demeaning, divisive, unreliable, discriminatory and discretionary. This weakness of public accountability for food security would matter less if people felt that markets were doing the job of guaranteeing access to good food. However, complaints about volatile and rising food prices continue to be a feature of everyday life, contrary to the overall impression of falling prices on world markets

UTJECAJ BOJE BAZENA NA RAST UZGAJANIH RIBA

Tank color impacts marine fish larval performance, as dark tanks appear to provide contrast that allows larvae to better visualize live and artificial prey. While tanks can be fabricated in any color, commercially available on–growing systems are generally black, green, or dark and light blue. Anecdotal information suggested that certain juvenile fish perform better in tanks with black sides and sandy colored bottoms. To determine whether tank color impacted performance of juvenile fish we examined the effect of black, green, red, dark, and light blue colored tanks on the short–term growth and feed efficiency of summer flounder and growth, feed efficiency, body composition of Nile tilapia. Cortisol response was also examined for both species. Tank color did not affect growth performance of flounder or tilapia although fish maintained in red–colored tanks returned better percent increases in weight. Differences (P < 0.05) in feed conversion efficiency were observed for summer flounder held in red tanks. Plasma cortisol levels in summer flounder ranged from 1.39–3.71 ng cortisol per ml, compared to 12.7–94.4 ng cortisol per ml plasma for tilapia. Lowest cortisol levels (P < 0.05) were detected in flounder and tilapia reared in red–colored aquaria. Background color had no effects on tilapia fillet composition.Boja uzgojnih bazena utječe na ličinački razvoj morskih riba. Tako je uočeno da tamna boja izaziva kontrast koji ličinkama omogućuje da se bolje prilagode na uvjete života. Budući da se uzgojni bazeni mogu tvornički obojiti u bilo koju boju, komercijalno se uglavnom upotrebljavaju crni, zeleni ili tamno i svijetlo plavi. Neki podaci sugeriraju da mlade ribice više vole bazene s crnim stranama, a dno da je boje pijeska. Da bismo potvrdili pretpostavku da boja bazena utječe na rast mladih riba, postavljen je pokus utjecaja crnih, zelenih, crvenih, tamno i svijetlo plavih bazena na kratkoročni rast i konverziju hrane listova, kao i na rast, konverziju hrane i kemijski sastav tilapija. Odgovor kortizola istraživan je u obiju vrsta riba. Boja bazena nije imala učinak na rast listova ili tilapija, iako su ribe držane u crvenim bazenima imale bolji postotak povećanja mase. Razlike (P < 0,05) pri konverziji hrane zapažene su kod listova držanih u crvenim bazenima. Količina plazma kortizola kod listova iznosila je između 1,39 i 3,71 ng kortizola na milimetar plazme, u usporedbi s 12,7–94,4 ng kortizola na mililitar plazme u tilapija. Najniža količina kortizola (P < 0,05) bila je zabilježena kod listova i tilapija uzgajanih u crvenim akvarijima. Osnovna boja nije imala učinak na kemijski sastav fileta tilapija

Evaluation of Operation IceBridge quick-look snow depth estimates on sea ice

We evaluate Operation IceBridge (OIB) ‘quick-look’ (QL) snow depth on sea ice retrievals using in situ measurements taken over immobile first-year ice (FYI) and multi-year ice (MYI) during March of 2014. Good agreement was found over undeformed FYI (-4.5 cm mean bias) with reduced agreement over deformed FYI (-6.6 cm mean bias). Over MYI, the mean bias was -5.7 cm but 54% of retrievals were discarded by the OIB retrieval process as compared to only 10% over FYI. Footprint scale analysis revealed a root mean square error (RMSE) of 6.2 cm over undeformed FYI with RMSE of 10.5 cm and 17.5 cm in the more complex deformed FYI and MYI environments. Correlation analysis was used to demonstrate contrasting retrieval uncertainty associated with spatial aggregation and ice surface roughness

Poll Tax photograph © Garry Clarkson/Alamy used in 'Society Now', the journal of The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Summer 2013. Nick Stevens, Editor - [email protected]

Poll Tax photograph from 1990, used in 'Society Now', the journal of The Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC). Summer 2013. Used to illustrate, 'The Blunders of Our Governments, by Anthony King and Ivor Crewe (Oneworld Publications September 2013. Contact Professor Anthony King, University of Essex Email [email protected] Telephone 01206 873393 ESRC Grant Number RES-062-23-2036 Nick Stevens, Editor - [email protected]. Photograph licensed through Alamy photo agency, © Garry Clarkson worldwide rights