The courage of our passion: examining the personal costs negotiated by three African American women executive educational leaders in urban contexts

This record of study is an examination of the personal costs negotiated by three African American women central office educational leaders. The focus is to identify the personal costs that these women experience as they work as leaders in three different urban educational settings. The purpose of this study is to give voice to these women and to promote the utilization of their knowledge and skills by identifying the costs, consequences of the costs and the ways these women cope, as well as to provide research for the small number of African American female central office leaders. This qualitative study included some of my experiences related to personal costs as well, since I share race and gender characteristics with the women participants and was an integral part of this research study. In addition I used feminist and Black feminist epistemology to guide my work. To access the data, I interviewed each woman twice in a location of her choice. The interviews were audio-taped and then transcribed. The transcriptions were read and re-read and the data unitized. The data were coded by the action or type of experience. Data were compiled into categories and then within each category subcategories were noted. The categories were derived from a combination of codes emerging from the data as well as core themes of Black feminist epistemology. The women in my study were well educated; two of them had doctoral degrees. They noted cost associated with their work as professionals as well as costs associated with their families and home life. Some identified costs were reduced time with families, health issues, few mentors, the scrutiny and burden of being the only African American female on their level in their organizations and salary inequities. To manage the costs the women utilized hired assistance, utilized the support of family and friends, were prayerful and maintained a commitment which centered on the vocation of children‟s education. Recommendations for solutions include a collective sponsorship to address the costs. In addition, it is in the best interest of everyone in schools to have more women like these leaders

All-age hospitalization rates in coal seam gas areas in Queensland, Australia, 1995–2011

Background: Unconventional natural gas development (UNGD) is expanding globally, with Australia expanding development in the form of coal seam gas (CSG). Residents and other interest groups have voiced concerns about the potential environmental and health impacts related to CSG. This paper compares objective health outcomes from three study areas in Queensland, Australia to examine potential environmentally-related health impacts. Methods: Three study areas were selected in an ecologic study design: A CSG area, a coal mining area, and a rural/agricultural area. Admitted patient data, as well as population data and additional factors, were obtained for each calendar year from 1995 through 2011 to calculate all-age hospitalization rates and age-standardized rates in each of these areas. The three areas were compared using negative binomial regression analyses (unadjusted and adjusted models) to examine increases over time of hospitalization rates grouped by primary diagnosis (19 ICD chapters), with rate ratios serving to compare the within-area regression slopes between the areas. Results: The CSG area did not have significant increases in all-cause hospitalization rates over time for all-ages compared to the coal and rural study areas in adjusted models (RR: 1.02, 95 % CI: 1.00-1.04 as compared to the coal mining area; RR: 1.01, 95 % CI: 0.99-1.04 as compared to the rural area). While the CSG area did not show significant increases in specific hospitalization rates compared to both the coal mining and rural areas for any ICD chapters in the adjusted models, the CSG area showed increases in hospitalization rates compared only to the rural area for neoplasms (RR: 1.09, 95 % CI: 1.02-1.16) and blood/immune diseases (RR: 1.14, 95 % CI: 1.02-1.27). Conclusions: This exploratory study of all-age hospitalization rates for three study areas in Queensland suggests that certain hospital admissions rates increased more quickly in the CSG study area than in other study areas, particularly the rural area, after adjusting for key sociodemographic factors. These findings are an important first step in identifying potential health impacts of CSG in the Australian context and serve to generate hypotheses for future studies

Multidimensional Perfectionism and Cortisol Stress Response in Non-Clinical Populations: A Systematic Review and Evaluation

The purpose of the study was to conduct a systematic review and evaluation of research examining multidimensional perfectionism and cortisol in non-clinical populations. A literature search yielded 6 studies examining cortisol reactivity (CR) and 2 studies examining cortisol awakening response (CAR). Each study was rated in terms of the methodological quality and evidence for the relationship between dimensions of perfectionism (perfectionistic strivings, PS, and perfectionistic concerns, PC) and cortisol was recorded. For CR, 1 study was rated as low methodological quality, 1 study was rated as medium methodological quality, and 4 studies were rated as high methodological quality. Of the high-quality studies, one study provided supportive evidence of a positive relationship between PC and CR, and a further 3 provided inconclusive/null evidence. The only high-quality study to examine the relationship between PS and CR provided inconclusive/null evidence. For CAR, 1 study was rated as low methodological quality and the other as medium methodological quality. Based on these findings, no firm conclusions can be drawn regarding the relationship between perfectionism and cortisol. Moreover, if research continues in the same vein, future research is unlikely to examine the relationship appropriately. We therefore recommend future research follows expert guidelines regarding assessing cortisol responses

Final report on project SP1210: Lowland peatland systems in England and Wales – evaluating greenhouse gas fluxes and carbon balances

Lowland peatlands represent one of the most carbon-rich ecosystems in the UK. As a result of widespread habitat modification and drainage to support agriculture and peat extraction, they have been converted from natural carbon sinks into major carbon sources, and are now amongst the largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from the UK land-use sector. Despite this, they have previously received relatively little policy attention, and measures to reduce GHG emissions either through re-wetting and restoration or improved management of agricultural land remain at a relatively early stage. In part, this has stemmed from a lack of reliable measurements on the carbon and GHG balance of UK lowland peatlands. This project aimed to address this evidence gap via an unprecedented programme of consistent, multi year field measurements at a total of 15 lowland peatland sites in England and Wales, ranging from conservation managed ‘near-natural’ ecosystems to intensively managed agricultural and extraction sites. The use of standardised measurement and data analysis protocols allowed the magnitude of GHG emissions and removals by peatlands to be quantified across this heterogeneous data set, and for controlling factors to be identified. The network of seven flux towers established during the project is believed to be unique on peatlands globally, and has provided new insights into the processes the control GHG fluxes in lowland peatlands. The work undertaken is intended to support the future development and implementation of agricultural management and restoration measures aimed at reducing the contribution of these important ecosystems to UK GHG emissions

The entropy budgets of UK peatlands – are some peatlands near equilibrium?

The energy budget of an ecosystem must obey the 2nd law of thermodynamics even if it is an open system. Several studies have sought to use a consideration of entropy budgets to understand ecosystem energy budgets and more specifically evaporation. It has been assumed that ecosystems are far-from-equilibrium systems and as such would always seek to maximise their entropy production. Although the approach has been used to consider the behaviour of environments there are no studies that have tested the approach or its implications: maximum entropy production (MEP) is a prediction of the far-from-equilibrium assumption that could be tested. The simplest way for an ecosystem to maximise entropy production is to maximise water loss through evaporation. To test whether a system is acting to maximise entropy production this study chose to consider how the energy budget of a peatland system responded to changes in incoming energy, specifically how a change in net radiation was transferred to changes in latent heat flux (E/Rn). An ecosystem maximising its entropy production would transfer the majority of change in net radiation to change in latent heat flux. Previously using this approach we have been able to show that for nine UK peatlands the average proportion of a change in net radiation that was transferred to change in latent heat flux varied from 24 to 63%. That is for some sites where the majority of change in input was transferred to latent heat while at another site where the majority was transferred to sensible heat flux. We now show that the sites significantly divided between two groups those with[U+F044][U+F06C]E/[U+F044]Rn > 0.4 and those with E/Rn < 0.3. To understand what this results means we have now considered the entropy budget of each site to test whether high values E/Rn are actually reflected in greater entropy production and how these approaches relate to the Bowen ratio

Ensemble prediction for nowcasting with a convection-permitting model—I: description of the system and the impact of radar-derived surface precipitation rates

A key strategy to improve the skill of quantitative predictions of precipitation, as well as hazardous weather such as severe thunderstorms and flash floods is to exploit the use of observations of convective activity (e.g. from radar). In this paper, a convection-permitting ensemble prediction system (EPS) aimed at addressing the problems of forecasting localized weather events with relatively short predictability time scale and based on a 1.5 km grid-length version of the Met Office Unified Model is presented. Particular attention is given to the impact of using predicted observations of radar-derived precipitation intensity in the ensemble transform Kalman filter (ETKF) used within the EPS. Our initial results based on the use of a 24-member ensemble of forecasts for two summer case studies show that the convective-scale EPS produces fairly reliable forecasts of temperature, horizontal winds and relative humidity at 1 h lead time, as evident from the inspection of rank histograms. On the other hand, the rank histograms seem also to show that the EPS generates too much spread for forecasts of (i) surface pressure and (ii) surface precipitation intensity. These may indicate that for (i) the value of surface pressure observation error standard deviation used to generate surface pressure rank histograms is too large and for (ii) may be the result of non-Gaussian precipitation observation errors. However, further investigations are needed to better understand these findings. Finally, the inclusion of predicted observations of precipitation from radar in the 24-member EPS considered in this paper does not seem to improve the 1-h lead time forecast skill

Blunted anticipatory stress responses on competition day in team sports athletes compared to individual sports athletes

Knowledge of anticipatory stress responses before sports competitions is limited, thus this study examined the relationship between anticipatory stress in terms of salivary cortisol secretion in athletes on the morning of a competition and a comparison baseline day. Thirty-seven athletes collected three saliva samples over a 45-min period post-awakening (0, 30 and 45 min). Anticipatory stress was expressed as Area Under the Curve compared to ground (AUCg; total cortisol secretion). There was no significant difference in AUCg between baseline and competition days. However, a mixed two-factor ANOVA with day and sport type (individual vs. team) revealed a significant main effect of sport type (p < 0.01) and a significant interaction (p = 0.001). Individual athletes demonstrated increased AUCg on competition day compared to baseline, while team athletes demonstrated decreased AUCg on competition day compared to baseline. This blunting response was also observed when analysing the raw cortisol secretion levels upon awakening. These findings suggest there may be substantive differences in anticipatory stress between individual and team sport athletes

Long-term trajectory and temporal dynamics of tropical peat subsidence in relation to plantation management and climate

Disentangling land-use and climatic influences on peat subsidence, and establishing the long-term trajectory of subsidence, are necessary to determine the future economic and environmental sustainability of managed peatland landscapes. While many peatlands in temperate regions such as Europe have been drained for centuries, those of Southeast Asia have mostly been drained for agriculture and forestry practices within the last 30 years. These areas are subsiding rapidly, but few long-term subsidence records exist, and it is unclear whether currently high subsidence rates will be maintained in future. Furthermore, large-scale climate fluctuations associated with the El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) exert a strong year-to-year influence on rainfall rates, affecting water table depth dynamics in both managed and intact peatlands. In this study, we analysed data collected over more than a decade of subsidence measurements from over 400 plantation and forest plots in Sumatra, Indonesia, including a unique set of 62 sites that have been continuously monitored since 2007. We show that spatial and temporal variations in subsidence rates are primarily determined by water table depth. We also find evidence of declining subsidence rates as a function of time since initial drainage, consistent with previous instrumental records from high-latitude peatlands and recent satellite data from tropical peatlands. Subsidence rates over the study period were strongly affected by the large ENSO/IOD-linked drought event in 2015–16, which caused an acceleration of subsidence across all sites. In plantation areas, we estimate that this climate perturbation caused around 14 % of subsidence observed over a twelve year period. At interior forest sites this rose to 32 %, and we found little evidence of ecosystem recovery to the end of 2018. This raises the possibility that repeated extreme droughts in the region could lead to long-term degradation of peat swamp forest ecosystems