Protecting fat mammals or carnivorous humans? Towards an environmental history of whales

Bisher wurde die Geschichte der Beziehung zwischen Walen und Menschen entweder als Geschichte des Schutzes wildlebender Tiere oder als Geschichte der symbolischen Beziehungen zwischen Menschen und Tieren geschrieben. Beide Aspekte, so die These dieses Beitrags, gehören jedoch zusammen. Werden sie getrennt, besteht die Gefahr, der Perspektive einiger Walschutzaktivisten zu verfallen, dass nämlich ein moralischer Gegensatz zwischen dem 'modernen' und dem 'traditionellen' Walfang bestünde. Der Beitrag macht die Vielfältigkeit und Komplexität der Interaktionen zwischen Menschen und Walen weltweit sichtbar und verweist auf eine Reihe von Fällen, in denen beide Erzählungen miteinander verbunden werden können, um so einen breiteren Horizont zu eröffnen. Der Beitrag gibt zudem einen kurzen Überblick über wichtige Etappen in der Umweltgeschichte der Wale, vor allem seit der Einrichtung der Internationalen Walfangkommission im Jahr 1946 und dem Aufkommen der 'Retter die Wale'-Kampagnen der 1970er Jahre. (ICEÜbers)'While the history of the relationship between whales and humans has been generally written as either a history of wildlife protection, or as a history of symbolic relations between humans and animals, this paper argues for the need to see these two aspects of the history in relationship with each other, and against treating them as separate themes. The result of this division has been a methodological entrenchment of the view promoted by some whaling activists: that 'modern' whaling and 'traditional' whaling are morally opposite to each other. Rather, the paper notes the multiplicity and complexity of human-whale interactions world-wide and points to several cases in which the two stories could be interwoven in order to enlarge the parameters of the field. In addition, the paper briefly summarizes the important events in the environmental history of whales, especially since the establishment of the International Whaling Commission in 1946, and the emergence of the 'save the whales' campaigns of the 1970s.' (author's abstract

Impacts of Wetland Characteristics on Duck Use in the Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) 1987-2013

Since 1987 the Waterfowl Breeding Populations and Production Estimates, also called the Four Square Mile Survey, has been conducted annually in the U.S. Prairie Pothole Region. The survey was designed to assess the influence of the Small Wetlands Acquisition Program on contributions to continental waterfowl populations (Cowardin et al. 1995). Each year cooperators visit sample wetlands during two survey periods, collecting data on observed waterfowl and pond conditions. Along with ground counts, aerial photography of sample areas is collected annually, capturing habitat conditions. My objective was to assess the influence of local and landscape factors on duck pair densities. Local factors are attributes immediately adjacent to, or within, an individual wetland that affect wetland appearance or function. Landscape factors represent wetland functions within varying compositions of upland cover types and wetland densities within Four Square Mile Survey plots. I evaluated multiple years of aerial imagery (1996, 2001, 2006, and 2011) and found few differences in feature types over the 20-year period. My technique analysis revealed that ocular (on screen) estimates of open water and trees were best at the sample pond boundary and within a 20 m buffer. Grass estimates generated from National Land Cover Data (2011) were best within the 48 m and 91 m buffers. I used an Akaike’s information-theoretic approach to assess several competing models at local and landscape scales. At the local scale, the best model that reflected the relationship between duck pairs and features showed wetland area, percentage of years dry, wetland regime, and percent open water to be the most influential factors. At the landscape scale, the best model included data pertaining to the number of wetlands present, total wetland area, and terrain ruggedness within each plot. Regardless of scale, trees were not found to be a specific deterrent to duck pairs settling

Preparing writing centers and tutors for literacy mediation for working class campus-staff

Writing centers work with writers; traditionally services have been focused on undergraduates taking composition classes. More recently, centers have started to attract a wider client base including: students taking labs that require writing; graduate students; and ESL students learning the conventions of U.S. communication. There are very few centers, however, which identify themselves as open to working with all members of the campus-community. Michigan Technological University has one such center. In the Michigan Tech writing center, doors are open to “all students, faculty and staff.” While graduate students, post docs, and professors preparing articles for publication have used the center, for the first time in the collective memory of the center UAW staff members requested center appointments in the summer of 2008. These working class employees were in the process of filling out a work related document, the UAW Position Audit, an approximately seven-page form. This form was their one avenue for requesting a review of the job they were doing; the review was the first step in requesting a raise in job level and pay. This study grew out of the realization that implicit literacy expectations between working class United Auto Workers (UAW) staff and professional class staff were complicating the filling out and filing of the position audit form. Professional class supervisors had designed the form as a measure of fairness, in that each UAW employee on campus was responding to the same set of questions about their work. However, the implicit literacy expectations of supervisors were different from those of many of the employees who were to fill out the form. As a result, questions that were meant to be straightforward to answer were in the eyes of the employees filling out the form, complex. Before coming to the writing center UAW staff had spent months writing out responses to the form; they expressed concerns that their responses still would not meet audience expectations. These writers recognized that they did not yet know exactly what the audience was expecting. The results of this study include a framework for planning writing center sessions that facilitate the acquisition of literacy practices which are new to the user. One important realization from this dissertation is that the social nature of literacy must be kept in the forefront when both planning sessions and when educating tutors to lead these sessions. Literacy scholars such as James Paul Gee, Brian Street, and Shirley Brice Heath are used to show that a person can only know those literacy practices that they have previously acquired. In order to acquire new literacy practices, a person must have social opportunities for hands-on practice and mentoring from someone with experience. The writing center can adapt theory and practices from this dissertation that will facilitate sessions for a range of writers wishing to learn “new” literacy practices. This study also calls for specific changes to writing center tutor education

A Positive Approach to Reducing Negative Student Behavior

The focus of this research involved the implementation of a behavior management system with a positive focus in order to investigate how it would encourage optimal student behavior. The behavior management system was Educational Non-Verbal Yardsticks (ENVoY), created by Michael Grinder (2005). The research was conducted throughout five first-grade Spanish classrooms in an urban Midwest location. Baseline data was measured through student artifacts, student feedback questionnaires, a teacher journal, and behavior observation checklists. Upon the conclusion of the baseline data collection, the remaining time included behavior modeling sessions, the implementation of ENVoY, and data collection. The data collection methods were the same as those used to measure baseline information. The data suggested that the use of ENVoY was beneficial in encouraging positive student behavior. The use of ENVoY will continue to be used within the Spanish classes

Differences in sexual knowledge of students from Christian and non-Christian colleges

The purpose of this study was to assess the sexual knowledge of students from a Christian college and two secular colleges and how any lack of sexual knowledge will impact their lives

Una estimación del producto potencial de Nicaragua, mediante el filtro de Hodrick - Prescott

An estimate of the potential production and output gap of Nicaragua has been made using the Hodrick-Prescott filter (1980), with data from the reports of the Central Bank of Nicaragua, taking the years 1980-2014 as a reference. The estimation results show that the level of production is above potential product, which puts upward pressure on prices.Se ha realizado una estimación de la producción potencial y la brecha del producto de Nicaragua utilizando el filtro de Hodrick-Prescott (1980), con datos de los informes del Banco Central de Nicaragua, tomando como referencia los años 1980-2014. Los resultados de la estimación demuestran que el nivel de la producción está por encima del producto potencial lo que presiona los precios al alza   &nbsp

PRM-RL: Long-range Robotic Navigation Tasks by Combining Reinforcement Learning and Sampling-based Planning

We present PRM-RL, a hierarchical method for long-range navigation task completion that combines sampling based path planning with reinforcement learning (RL). The RL agents learn short-range, point-to-point navigation policies that capture robot dynamics and task constraints without knowledge of the large-scale topology. Next, the sampling-based planners provide roadmaps which connect robot configurations that can be successfully navigated by the RL agent. The same RL agents are used to control the robot under the direction of the planning, enabling long-range navigation. We use the Probabilistic Roadmaps (PRMs) for the sampling-based planner. The RL agents are constructed using feature-based and deep neural net policies in continuous state and action spaces. We evaluate PRM-RL, both in simulation and on-robot, on two navigation tasks with non-trivial robot dynamics: end-to-end differential drive indoor navigation in office environments, and aerial cargo delivery in urban environments with load displacement constraints. Our results show improvement in task completion over both RL agents on their own and traditional sampling-based planners. In the indoor navigation task, PRM-RL successfully completes up to 215 m long trajectories under noisy sensor conditions, and the aerial cargo delivery completes flights over 1000 m without violating the task constraints in an environment 63 million times larger than used in training.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figure

An Evaluation of the Kansas Bioscience Authority: Economic Impact Measures

In the fall of 2011, the Kansas Bioscience Authority (KBA) requested that the University of Kansas Center for Science, Technology & Economic Policy at the Institute for Policy & Social Research provide a review of KBA’s Direct Outcomes Description and Measurement Policy. This policy informs KBA's collection of economic impact data and frames KBA’s policies more generally in light of technology evaluation. This report responds to KBA's request and addresses the following topics: 1) general challenges of technology evaluation; 2) the scope of KBA’s technology programs; 3) the contributions of KBA’s current measures to overall program evaluation; 4) measures that might be added or enhanced in the future; and 5) a comparison of this review to other efforts to evaluate KBA. This report discusses the inherent difficulty of measuring long‐term scientific investments with short‐term indicators of future economic impact. KBA has several programs designed to increase bioscience research, foster commercial development, and attract new ventures to the state of Kansas. Each of these activities requires different metrics to evaluate its overall impact. We reviewed these metrics and compared them to those being collected by similar state agencies as well as the federal STAR METRICS program. Our review shows that KBA collects more metrics than agencies reviewed in other states. KBA also collects many of the indicators used in the federal STAR METRICS program. We recommend that KBA enhance its measures by including additional STAR METRICS measures such as patent citations, scientific publications, and workforce development indicators including students trained in bioscience on KBA funded projects. Although, KBA has been reviewed on two previous occasions, this report provides new information on the quality of the economic impact data they collect. Overall, we find that KBA collects a comprehensive set of outcome measures that span the scope of KBA’s mission and provide the basis for understanding the economic impact of their scientific investments

Synergistic up-regulation of CXCL10 by virus and IFN γ in human airway epithelial cells.

Airway epithelial cells are the first line of defense against viral infections and are instrumental in coordinating the inflammatory response. In this study, we demonstrate the synergistic stimulation of CXCL10 mRNA and protein, a key chemokine responsible for the early immune response to viral infection, following treatment of airway epithelial cells with IFN γ and influenza virus. The synergism also occurred when the cells were treated with IFN γ and a viral replication mimicker (dsRNA) both in vitro and in vivo. Despite the requirement of type I interferon (IFNAR) signaling in dsRNA-induced CXCL10, the synergism was independent of the IFNAR pathway since it wasn't affected by the addition of a neutralizing IFNAR antibody or the complete lack of IFNAR expression. Furthermore, the same synergistic effect was also observed when a CXCL10 promoter reporter was examined. Although the responsive promoter region contains both ISRE and NFκB sites, western blot analysis indicated that the combined treatment of IFN γ and dsRNA significantly augmented NFκB but not STAT1 activation as compared to the single treatment. Therefore, we conclude that IFN γ and dsRNA act in concert to potentiate CXCL10 expression in airway epithelial cells via an NFκB-dependent but IFNAR-STAT independent pathway and it is at least partly regulated at the transcriptional level

An Examination of the Predictive Validity of Curriculum-Embedded Measures for Kindergarten Students

The purpose of the present research was to examine the predictive validity of curriculum-embedded mastery-check measures (CEMs) for kindergarten students in Tier 2 intervention. Two studies examined the predictive validity, parsimony, and changing role of CEMs using a structural equation modeling (SEM) framework. Study 1 examined the ability of CEMs gathered throughout the kindergarten year to predict end-of-kindergarten latent reading outcomes. Study 2 examined the ability of kindergarten CEMs to predict end-of-first and end-of-second grade latent reading outcomes. Study 1 used SEM with two latent outcomes (i.e., phonemic and decoding) composed of diverse measures of early reading skills gathered at the end of kindergarten. Findings indicated moderate to large effects, as measured by variance explained, for CEMs on predicting phonemic and decoding outcomes. For CEMs gathered at four time points throughout the kindergarten year, a parsimonious set of subtests emerged. In addition, the role of CEMs changed throughout the year as predictors reaching statistical significance were increasingly difficult. Findings indicated that an increased amount of variance could be explained on the outcomes measures as the year progressed. Study 2 used one latent reading outcome factor gathered at the end of first and second grades. Findings for the end of first grade indicated that parsimonious sets of predictors from CEMs administered at three times during the kindergarten year predicted end-of-first grade outcomes. Additionally, the role of indicators changed during the year and the amount of variance explained increased from the first to third CEM. Results for the end of second grade indicated the variance explained on the outcome measure increased from the first CEM to the third CEM. When considering near-significant results, a pattern emerged demonstrating parsimonious subsets of indicators that changed during the kindergarten year. Findings from both studies provided support for the predictive validity of CEMs gathered during kindergarten for students in Tier 2 intervention. Results from both studies demonstrated statistically significant subsets of predictors that emerged and changed during the kindergarten year congruent with reading development, which can be useful for informing educational decisions