Ecological CO2 Flux of a Green Roof Ecosystem and a Typical Grassland Ecosystem

The Hillside Auditorium Green Roof is a low impact development feature on the University of Arkansas campus. It retains storm water and allows plants living on the roof to take up and transpire the water. Green roofs work to mimic natural ecosystems in urban environments. A key property is ecosystem respiration, which plays a large role in the global carbon cycle and is an important biologic activity indicator. The ecosystem respiration of Hillside Auditorium Green Roof was compared to a typical grassland ecosystem at the University of Arkansas farm to determine how closely the green roof is able to mimic this ecosystem. The CO2 flux was compared to multiple parameters, such as soil temperature, soil moisture content, soil organic matter content, and amount of vegetation in testing area. The CO2 flux was found to have a positive relation with soil temperature on the green roof. There was little correlation between CO2 flux and soil moisture content on the green roof. There was a significant relationship between the CO2 flux and soil moisture content at the BENG Lab. In theory, increased amounts of organic matter will increase the flux of CO2 from the soil; however, the two study locations were found to have similar organic matter contents, and a conclusion could not be drawn if amount of organic matter caused a higher flux rate or not. The amount of vegetation in the study area will increase the amount of respiration and therefore increase the CO2 flux. Overall, the green roof had statistically higher rates of CO2 flux during the spring season

The Evolution of the Lower Court of Nova Scotia

The evolution of the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia has been well described elsewhere.\u27 This paper will describe the evolution during the colonial period of the main civil and criminal lower courts of Nova Scotia. Omitted are such courts as the Vice Admiralty and Probate Courts. These require separate examination. This paper traces the development of the courts of General Sessions of the Peace and the Inferior Court of Common Pleas, the main criminal and civil lower courts of the period, from the time of their inception shortly after the founding of Halifax in 1749. The examination of these courts ends in 1841 when the Inferior Court of Common Pleas was dissolved and its functions were assumed by an enlarged Supreme Court. At the same time the Supreme Court assumed the major criminal jurisdiction of the Court of General Sessions of the Peace, leaving the latter as a non-jury2 court (outside of Halifax County) with jurisdiction only in minor criminal matters and small civil actions

Visual Arts Education for Grades 6-12 in Arkansas and Its Changes Since the Twentieth Century

The field of education in the United States has changed greatly in many ways since its foundation. No longer do students meet in small log cabins with all ages together to learn the basics of a few practical subjects before returning to regular life. The federal government seeks to provide consistently updated standards for how children of all ages should be instructed and have frequently modernized the education system. From creating mandated subjects of learning, such as math, science, reading, writing, foreign languages, and art, raising teacher salaries, and instigating assessments to ensure complete subject literacy, America has shown in many ways that it values education. However, the push for reform concerning STEM education, which stands for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, grossly outweighs the support for art education, specifically in the visual arts

Estimating the Racial Composition of Groups of Faces: An Ensemble Other-Race Effect

In the current study we presented Asian and Caucasian participants with brief displays containing 16 faces and asked them to judge whether there were more Asians or Caucasians present. We varied the physical proportion of each race in the display using the method of constant stimuli and obtained estimates of the point of subjective equality (PSE) by fitting cumulative normal functions to individual data. Consistent with recent findings on “ensemble” face processing, participants were able to make group estimates quite accurately. However, the estimates from the two groups of participants did not overlap, with Asian participants appearing to weight other-race faces more heavily than Caucasian participants. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of an other-race effect in the context of groups of faces

The relationship between corporate governance and dividend payouts in Canada

This paper studies the relationship between corporate governance and dividend policy in Canada. We find that corporate governance is positively related to the size of the dividend paid for dividend paying companies. We do not, however, find support for a relationship between corporate governance and the propensity to pay a dividend