Graptemys

Number of Pages: 3Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Graptemys oculifera

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Pseudemys alabamensis

Number of Pages: 2Integrative BiologyGeological Science

Feeding of Hatchery-reared Brown Trout (Salmo trutta L.) In Relation To The Diet In A South Dakota Stream

One thousand five hundred catchable brown trout (17-26 cm) were stocked into the South Fork of the Yellowbank River May 17, 1973. Samples were taken one month apart from May 22, 1973, through October 29, 1973. Fifteen-minute drift samples were collected every hour for 24 hours and trout were captured every 4 hours. Trout captured ruing the study varied in condition ® from 1.34 to 2.55. Condition progressively decreased through August, rose in September, and decreased again by the October sample. The average weight of brown trout increased through the September sample and decreased in October. Two peaks in number of drifting invertebrates occurred at night in the samples for May through September and one peak occurred at night in the October sample. All nighttime peaks were a result of changes in the number of drifting benthic and emergent invertebrates; the presence of terrestrial invertebrates influenced the daytime drift patterns. Adult chironomids accounted for 60-90 percent of the emergent drift, and chironomid pupae and larvae constituted a large portion of the benthic drift in the June, July, and August samples. Ephemeroptera were the second most abundant order of invertebrates in the drift; Baetidae and Caenidae contributed 95 percent of all mayflies collected. Hydropsychidae and Hydroptilidae comprised 93 percent of all drifting Trichoptera. Frogs and fishes were the primary food consumed by the brown trout examined. Trout ate a variety of invertebrates. Ephemeropterans comprised 45 percent by numbers, 27 percent by weight, and 21 percent by volume of all invertebrates consumed. Trichopterans constituted 20 percent by numbers, 34 percent by weight, and 38 percent by volume of all invertebrates consumed. Dipterans comprised 17 percent by numbers, 28 percent by weight, and 28 percent by volume of al invertebrates consumed. Correlation between mean drift rates (for the 4 hours prior to the trout sample) and mean stomach contents for all six sampling dates were not significant. Brown trout examined did not exploit the diel drift patterns of stream invertebrates. Hatchery-reared brown trout may require a longer acclimation time before full exploitation of invertebrate drift develops

Are classroom internet use and academic performance higher after government broadband subsidies to primary schools?

This paper combines data from a government programme providing broadband access to primary schools in Ireland with survey microdata on schools’, teachers’ and pupils use of the internet to examine the links between public subsidies, classroom use of the internet and educational performance. Provision of broadband service under a government scheme was associated with more than a doubling of teachers’ use of the internet in class after about a two year lag. Better computing facilities in schools were also associated with higher internet use, but advertised download speed was not statistically significant. A second set of models show that use of the internet in class was associated with significantly higher average mathematics scores on standardised tests. There was also a less robust positive association with reading scores. A set of confounding factors is included, with results broadly in line with previous literature

Phonologically Informed Edit Distance Algorithms for Word Alignment with Low-Resource Languages

We present three methods for weighting edit distance algorithms based on linguistic information. These methods base their penalties on (i) phonological features, (ii) distributional character embeddings, or (iii) differences between cognate words. We also introduce a novel method for evaluating edit distance through the task of low-resource word alignment by using edit-distance neighbors in a high-resource pivot language to inform alignments from the low-resource language. At this task, the cognate-based scheme outperforms our other methods and the Levenshtein edit distance baseline, showing that NLP applications can benefit from information about cross-linguistic phonological patterns

Non-Entailed Subsequences as a Challenge for Natural Language Inference

Neural network models have shown great success at natural language inference (NLI), the task of determining whether a premise entails a hypothesis. However, recent studies suggest that these models may rely on fallible heuristics rather than deep language understanding. We introduce a challenge set to test whether NLI systems adopt one such heuristic: assuming that a sentence entails all of its subsequences, such as assuming that "Alice believes Mary is lying" entails "Alice believes Mary." We evaluate several competitive NLI models on this challenge set and find strong evidence that they do rely on the subsequence heuristic.Comment: Accepted as an abstract for SCiL 2019; added acknowledgment

The Economics and Marketing of Tobacco an Overview of the Existing Published Evidence. ESRI Policy Series No. 46. September 2002

In this report we examine a wide range of literature published in Ireland on the economics and marketing of tobacco and assess the evidence that this presents on a range of issues. In doing so we aim to provide an overview of current research and conclusions reached as well as identifying gaps in research that require attention. Throughout the report we have endeavoured to examine and assess a wide range of sources from academic literature and government reports to so called “grey sources” such as newspapers, trade magazines and professional journals

Are classroom internet use and academic performance higher after government broadband subsidies to primary schools? ESRI Research Bulletin 2015/2/6

The connection of schools and other educational institutions to broadband networks continues to be high on the agendas of politicians and policymakers around the world. Successive Irish governments have invested in programmes to improve internet access for schools at both primary and second level. Policy statements have stressed the positive role broadband would play in education, arguing that it would “significantly enhance the potential of ICT in teaching and learning” and would “pay dividends in years to come” (DCMNR, 2004)