Intensifying Impact: State Budget Cuts Deepen Pain for Ohio Communities

Policy Matters Ohio looked at the size and scope of cuts in each county and in many municipalities. We talked with city and county administrators, local elected officials and residents. On our website, there is a link for each Ohio county that describes the loss in state funding and the impact on cities, towns and services within that county. Because local newspaper clips and quotes from local officials are used, this brief is an oral history as well as a presentation of charts and graphs. The insights of those interviewed add clarity and depth to a description of hard times

14. Ten Years of Vegetation Observations on Formerly Grazed Oklahoma Grassland

In summer 2003, we established a series of 40 adjacent, 10310-m blocks in formerly grazed grassland in southcentral Oklahoma. The blocks were allowed to rest and received no grazing, mowing, or burning. We tracked changes in the vegetation of the site over time between 2005 and 2015. Frequency sampling of prairie vegetation was performed at irregular intervals. In spring 2006 we seeded half the site with a Texas/Oklahoma prairie forb mix. We found no significant trends of change in species richness or diversity over time. However, there were subtle changes in abundance of individual species. Across fall sampling periods, Shannon diversity ranged from 1.1 to 1.3, and species richness ranged from 29 to 41, with higher richness and diversity in the sole spring sample. The percentage of nonnative species present at the site ranged from 13 to 18%. The earliest samples showed that the dominant grass species were little bluestem (Schizachyrium scoparium (Michx.) Nash), three-awn (Aristida oligantha Michx.), and Scribner’s panic grass (Dichanthelium oligosanthes (Schult.) Gould). The dominant forb present was ragweed (Ambrosia artemesiifolia L.). By the end of the 10-year time period, little bluestem had declined in relative frequency and Scribner’s panic grass and three-awn had increased in frequency. Among forbs, sumpweed (Iva annua L.) had entered the site and become a dominant forb, heath aster (Symphyotricum ericoides (L.) G.L. Nesom) increased in frequency, and ragweed abundance fluctuated over time. The most commonly encountered nonnative species were Bermuda grass (Cynodon dactylon (L.) Pers.), singletary-pea (Lathyrus hirsutus L.), and sericea lespedeza (Lespedeza cuneata (Dum. Cours.) G. Don.), but none of these species increased in abundance over time. In addition, there was anecdotal evidence of woody species encroachment on the site, mostly winged elm (Ulmus alata Michx.), wild plum (Prunus sp.), and red cedar (Juniperus virginiana L.). Establishment of the prairie mix appears to have been unsuccessful. In this study, cessation of grazing (‘‘resting’’ a site) alone did not allow for recovery of prairie vegetation and may have permitted invasion of undesirable herbaceous and woody species

An Analysis of Stomach Contents of the Ouachita Madtom in Three Streams of the Upper Saline River Drainage, Arkansas

A study was conducted to identify typical foods eaten by the Ouachita madtom (Noturus lachneri), an endemic ictalurid of central Arkansas, and to compare these foods to the invertebrate community. Fish and invertebrate samples were collected in August and October, 1990, from a pool and adjacent riffle habitat in each of 3 streams in the upper Saline River drainage. Kick-net and electrofishing samples were collected at each site and the invertebrate organisms were identified to the lowest possible taxa. Stomachs from the N. lachneri specimens were removed and the contents were identified to order. Frequency of occurrence of each taxon was compared between stomach contents and kick-net samples. Similarities between kick-net samples and stomach contents indicate that N. lachneri specimens were not highly selective in food preference in the riffle and pool habitats of these Ouachita Mountain streams

A Herpetofaunal Survey of the Boehler Seeps Preserve, with Reports of New County Records and Recommendations for Conservation Efforts

A survey of the amphibians and reptiles of the The Nature Conservany's Boehler Seeps and Sandhills Preserve (BSSP) was conducted from March -October, 2008. The goal of the project was to provide baseline data, data to assist with designing future survey and monitoring efforts, and recommendations for herpetofaunal conservation. A variety of herpetofaunal survey protocols, including visual encounter surveys, anuran calling surveys, pitfall trapping, turtles trapping, and opportunistic detections, were used. The preserve was divided into three segments for our survey efforts, each stratified by two habitat types (upland forest and bottomland/wetland forest). We spent approximately 400 person-hours conducting surveys. A total of 2,673 individuals representing 41 species were captured or detected. All sampling protocols contributed to the overall species diversity detected. Seven new distribution records for Atoka County were documented, but we failed to detect several species that we expected to encounter. The BSSP provides unique habitat and refugia for a wide array of amphibian and reptile species native to southeastern Oklahoma, however, the area is not without impacts, both anthropogenic and natural, and we provide recommendations for conservation efforts that address some of the primary impacts

Enhancing access to the levy sheet music collection: reconstructing full-text lyrics from syllables

The goal of the Lester S. Levy Sheet Music Collection, Phase Two project is to develop tools, processes, and systems that facilitate collection ingestion through automated processes that reduce, but not necessarily eliminate human intervention[1]. One of the major components of this project is an optical music recognition (OMR) system[2] that extracts musical information and lyric text from the page images that comprise each piece in a collection. It is often the case, as it is with the Levy Collection, that lyrics embedded in music notation are written in a syllabicated form so that each syllable lines up with the note or notes to which it corresponds. Searching the syllabicated form of words, however, would be counterintuitive and cumbersome for end-users. This paper describes the evolution of a tool that, using a simple algorithm, rebuilds complete words from lyric syllables and, in ambiguous cases, provides feedback to the collection builder. This system will be integrated into the workflow of the Levy Sheet Music Collection, but has broad applicability for any project ingesting musical scores with lyrics

How should activity guidelines for young people be operationalised?

Background: If guidelines regarding recommended activity levels for young people are to be meaningful and comparable, it should be clear how they are operationalised. It is usually open to interpretation whether young people are required to meet activity and screen time targets (1) all days of the week, (2) on most days of the week, (3) on average across all days, or (4) whether compliance should be understood as the probability that a randomly selected young person meets the guidelines on a randomly selected day. This paper studies this question using data drawn from the Australian Health of Young Victorians study.Methods: The subjects for this study were 885 13–19 year olds who recalled four days of activities using a computerised use-of-time instrument, the Multimedia Activity Recall for Children and Adolescents (MARCA). Daily minutes of moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) and screen time were calculated. The prevalence of compliance to Australian guidelines (≥ 60 min/day of MVPA and ≤ 120 min/day of screen time outside of school hours) was calculated using the four methods.Results: The four methods resulted in significantly different prevalence estimates for compliance to the MVPA guideline (20–68%), screen guideline (12–42%) and both guidelines (2–26%). Furthermore, different individuals were identified as compliant by the different methods.Conclusion: Clarification of how compliance to guidelines should be operationalised would assist in comparisons between studies, and in consistency in determining correlates of compliance

Pave It or Plant It, 7th - 12th Grade Curriculum

Students will use simple watershed models to measure runoff from natural and urbanized areas. They will graph the data to create and compare the hydrographs of these two different types of watersheds. Students will also map different areas in their neighborhood, calculate the amount of impervious surface in the area, and determine how this affects the volume of stormwater runoff expected from a typical rainstorm. Finally, students will list different types of pollutants that enter the streams from urban areas and learn about possible impacts to the stream. They will also learn about possible methods of reducing these impacts through community or individual actions

Early Carboniferous limestones of southern and central Britain: characterisation and preliminary assessment of deep geothermal prospectivity

In Britain, thick limestones of early Carboniferous (Mississippian: 359–323 Ma) age are present in two provinces, respectively south and north of the Wales-Anglo-Brabant landmass. In the southern province, early Carboniferous limestones were deposited upon a southward-deepening shelf, laterally continuous from Ireland to the Rhineland. They now occupy a number of discrete minibasins as a consequence of Variscan orogenic thrusting and significant post-Carboniferous erosion. In the northern province, local tectonic controls led to the development of a mosaic of deepwater basins, ramps and platforms in response to Mississippian extensional stress. The interaction with glacioeustatic sea-level change led to the development of complex carbonate system tracts on these ramps and platforms. Given favourable conditions of palaeokarst development and fracturing, hydraulic transmissivity could be sufficient to allow development as a geothermal resource. Deep geothermal prospectivity is controlled by a hierarchy of factors, operating on scales ranging from provincial (1000–100 km) down to outcrop (1000–100 m), reflecting processes operating on the lithospheric down to sub-basinal scale respectively. On the scale of the individual prospect, these factors include the mode of carbonate deposition, particularly depth of water and angle of depositional slope, which are tectonically controlled; the history of synsedimentary exposure, erosion and karstification, strongly influenced by sea-level change; by the diagenetic history and subsequent basin evolution; by deformation and fracturing during Variscan basin inversion; and by the post-Carboniferous history of subsidence, uplift and karstification. The contrasting impact of these various processes upon hydraulic transmissivity in the two provinces is reviewed, and a preliminary assessment of the geothermal prospectivity of each is presented. The most prospective areas for deep geothermal exploitation are considered to be basins, shelves and platforms lying at depths of 2 to 5 km below sea level. Deepwater basins are considered less prospective because of the lack of thick limestones, except in the hanging wall at fault-bounded margins, where Waulsortian mud-mounds with good residual porosity and fault-zones with polyphase history are likely present. Granite underpinned highs in N England, where Carboniferous limestones are typically at crop, and shallow basins of Carboniferous age lying on the Wales-Anglo-Brabant Massif, are considered less prospective in the deep geothermal context