Genetic Study of Recent Samples of American Marten (Martes americana) from Vermont

American marten (Martes americana) was listed as endangered in Vermont in 1987 due to an absence of detection since 1954. Between 1989 and 1991, marten from Maine were reintroduced into southwestern Vermont but studies deemed the reintroduction unsuccessful. However, since 1998 marten have been detected in northeastern Vermont and are thought to represent colonization from a northern New Hampshire population. As of 2010 marten have also been detected in southwestern Vermont. The objective of this study was to provide insight into the source of the recently discovered marten population in southwestern Vermont by testing three hypotheses: (1) the northern New Hampshire population as the source of the northeastern Vermont population; (2) the southwestern Vermont population being derived by long distance dispersal from northeastern Vermont and/or northern New Hampshire populations; and (3) the southwestern Vermont population being remnants of the reintroduction. Three microsatellite loci were compared among 12 marten samples from northeastern Vermont, 3 samples from southwestern Vermont, and 12 samples from northern New Hampshire. No significant genetic differentiation existed between the populations and no samples from northern Vermont could be excluded as members of the northern New Hampshire source population, therefore the first hypothesis could not be rejected. There was evidence of a founder effect (lower genetic variation and loss of rare alleles) shown by the lower effective number of alleles for both the southern Vermont population (3.024) and northern Vermont population (3.512) as compared to the New Hampshire population (4.169), along with the presence of heterozygosity excess for both Vermont populations. There was also evidence of migration and assignment of samples from southern Vermont to the northern Vermont and New Hampshire source populations, thus the second hypothesis could not be rejected. Similar findings (lower genetic variation and loss of rare alleles) could also result from a recent bottleneck due to the reintroduction program. The third hypothesis, therefore, could not be rejected and additional supporting evidence was exhibited by a presence of different alleles in the southwestern Vermont population. Comparing the second and third hypotheses, a found effect is more likely than a bottleneck due to the inability to exclude northern Vermont and/or northern New Hampshire as a source of the southern Vermont population

Anthropological reflections on tattoos amongst punk women

The relationship between identity and tattooing regarding female members of the punk community has not been fully explored by the academic community. Through the exploration of the anthropological history of tattoos as markers of identity, the pro-social aspects of this form of body modification can be illustrated. Placing emphasis on punk women, tattoos are shown to positively affect individual identity and reinforce social bonds. The pioneering nature of punk music and the outright rejection of cultural norms creates an atmosphere in which women can more adequately express their identity through the use of body modification. In this open environment where societal norms regarding body modification are rebuked, tattoos are also used to reinforce social bonds amongst those willing to permanently display their dedication to a non-mainstream aesthetic

Use of Social Media in Employment: Should I Fire? Should I Hire?

[Excerpt] It used to be that writing on someone’s wall would get you in trouble, tweets were only for the birds, and poking was rude. The advent of social media has revolutionized the way we communicate as a society, and wireless technologies allow us to do so faster than we ever thought possible. The lines between personal and professional personas have merged into an indistinguishable haze of likes, links, and posts, making transparency an everyday issue

Distinguishing Harms to Derive Commitments: Karen Warren and Aldo Leopold on Ecofeminism and Domination

This paper explores Karen Warren\u27s formulation of an Ecofeminist argument, and aims to restructure it in a way that does not equate the impacts of domination on women with the impacts of domination on the natural world. With supplemental elements of Aldo Leopold\u27s Land Ethic arguments, I hope to provide a reformulation of Warren\u27s argument in which the dominator is still committed to dismantling these twin dominations. I posit that this commitment may be derived from the harm the process of dominating inflicts on the dominator\u27s perfectionist value and prudential value, an element which remains consistent in both dominations and indeed may move the dominator to action

Perinatal Palliative Care: Integration in a United States Nurse Midwifery Education Program

Midwifery students with perinatal palliative care education develop a skillset to provide holistic midwifery care to women and families who are experiencing stillbirth or life-limiting fetal diagnoses. This paper presents a model of perinatal palliative care in a United States midwifery education program. By utilizing evidence based practices and national programs, perinatal palliative care can be threaded through midwifery curricula to achieve international standards of practice and competencies. Most importantly, enhancing perinatal palliative care education will better prepare future midwives for when a birth outcome is not what was expected at the outset of a pregnancy

Can Law and Economics Be Both Practical and Principled?

This article describes important recent developments in normative law and economics, and the difficulties they create for the project of efficiency-based legal reform. After long proceeding without a well articulated moral justification for using economic decision procedures to choose legal rules, scholars have lately begun to devote serious attention to developing a philosophically attractive definition of well-being. At the same time, the empirical side of law and economics is also being enriched with an improved understanding of the complexities of individuals\u27 decision-making behavior. That is where the problems begin. Scholars may have better, more plausible conceptions of well-being in hand, but it is not at all clear how to develop practical techniques for measuring and comparing individuals\u27 gains and losses in well-being, so defined. And at the practical end, behavioral research suggests that the range of individual preferences that economic analysis must accommodate is broader and more complex than was previously assumed. We detail a variety of psychological studies that suggest that individuals often hold law-related preferences: direct preferences about the content and fairness of their legal system. These preferences defy market valuation, yet we argue that they cannot be ignored. Most intriguingly, studies suggest that in some cases people hold a preference that legal decisions should not be made on an economic basis. We describe such anti-utilitarian preferences, collecting evidence of their strength and permanence. In the final part of the article, we offer predictions about the future development of law and economics, in light of its growing theoretical sophistication and the evidence of law-related preferences. The most likely outcomes are: (1) scholars advocating various forms of paternalism, whether by excluding citizens from participation in the legal system or by discounting some types of individual preferences from consideration in choosing policies; or (2) a limited implementation of economic techniques, applying them strongly in some areas of the law but not in others. We discuss the relative strengths and failures of each proposed approach, and offer suggestions for future empirical work. We conclude by giving a tentative answer to the question that titles the article

UV and Visible Light-Driven Production of Hydroxyl Radicals by Reduced Forms of N, F, and P Codoped Titanium Dioxide

The photocatalytic activities of reduced titanium dioxide (TiO2) materials have been investigated by measuring their ability to produce hydroxyl radicals under UV and visible light irradiation. Degussa P25 TiO2 was doped with nitrogen (N), fluorine (F), and/or phosphorus (P) and then subjected to surface modification employing a thermo-physicochemical process in the presence of reducing agent sodium borohydride (NaBH4). The reduced TiO2 materials were characterized by a number of X-ray, spectroscopic and imaging methods. Surface doping of TiO2 was employed to modulate the band gap energies into the visible wavelength region for better overlap with the solar spectrum. Hydroxyl radical generation, central to TiO2 photocatalytic water purification applications, was quantitated using coumarin as a trap under UV and visible light irradiation of the reduced TiO2 materials. At 350 nm irradiation, the yield of hydroxyl radicals generated by the reduced forms of TiO2 was nearly 90% of hydroxyl radicals generated by the Degussa P25 TiO2. Hydroxyl radical generation by these reduced forms of TiO2 was also observed under visible light irradiation (419 and 450 nm). These results demonstrated that simple surface modification of doped TiO2 can lead to visible light activity, which is important for more economical solar-driven applications of TiO2 photocatalysis