Integrating scientific assessment of wetland areas and economic evaluation tools to develop an evaluation framework to advise wetland management

Wetland ecosystems provide society with a range of valuable ecosystem services. However, wetlands worldwide are experiencing increasing pressure from a number of sources, caused by an interrelated combination of market failure and policy intervention failure. Whatever the cause, the result is massive degradation and loss of these ecosystems and ultimately, loss of their services. To better manage wetlands the availability of sufficient relevant and reliable scientific information is required together with an assessment tool capable of providing meaningful evaluations of the consequences of management. Current assessments of wetlands are often biased towards either economic or scientific issues, with limited attempts at integration. Evaluations that neglect integration overlook the complexity of wetland ecosystems and have failed to sufficiently protect these areas. This paper reviews the literature to propose an evaluation framework which combines a scientific assessment of wetland function with cost utility analysis (CUA) to develop a meaningful trade-off matrix. A dynamic approach to wetland assessment such as the hydro geomorphologic method (HGM), developed by the US Army Corps of Engineers, offers the opportunity to consider interrelationships between ecosystem process and functions and the resulting ecosystem services. CUA facilitates the evaluation of projects where the consequences of investment or no investment are complex and difficult to value in monetary terms. The evaluation framework described in this paper has the potential to deliver an integrated wetland management tool. However, for this potential to be realised, targeted interdisciplinary research by scientists and economists is required.

Multi-scale hydrogeomorphic influences on bull trout spawning habitat in snowmelt-dominated headwater streams

I investigated relationships between geomorphology, hydrogeology, and bull trout (Salvelinus confluentus) redd occurrence and density at multiple spatial scales in gravel-bed, pool-riffle, snowmelt dominated headwater streams of northwestern Montana. Subreach redd occurrence tended to be associated with the finest available textural facies. In subreach streambed sections hosting bull trout redds, redd density was significantly (at α=0.05) positively related to bankfull Shields stress (τ*bf, p=0.04) and bankfull Shields stress adjusted for grain stress only (τ**bf, p=0.02). In stream reaches hosting bull trout redds, reach-average redd density was significantly positively related to reach-average τ**bf (p=0.02) and reach-average streambed grain size (D16, p=0.01; D50, p=0.02, D84, p=0.02). Spawning reaches exhibited high streambed horizontal and vertical hydraulic conductivities, and streambed temperatures were dominated by stream water diurnal cycles to a depth of at least 25 cm. Groundwater provided substantial thermal moderation of stream water for multiple high density spawning reaches. At the valley-scale, redd occurrence tended to be associated with unconfined alluvial valleys. Many previous studies highlight the thermal sensitivity of bull trout. My spawning gravel competence results indicate that a shift in the timing of high flows could increase the likelihood of redd scour during the bull trout egg incubation period

COVID-19: Intranasal and Oral Routes of Vaccination

The mainstay protocol exercised by global health leaders to control the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome corona virus (SARS-CoV-2) has been screening, the identification of cases, isolation thereof, contact tracing and nation-wide lockdowns. The development of vaccinations against the SARS-CoV-2 virus has marked a new dawn for the war against corona virus disease (COVID-19)

SARS-CoV-2 and its sinister routes of transmission: Mauritius from COVID safe paradise to COVID outbreak

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“TO SAVE MY OWN LIFE”: Antebellum Autobiography and Figures for Black Ontology

My dissertation “TO SAVE MY OWN LIFE: Antebellum Autobiography and the Figures for Black Ontology”, directed by Stephen Best, revisits the autobiographical narrations of several canonical (formally enslaved) writers to discover in them the origins of the contemporary methods for black study—emblematized by the archival poetics of M. NourbeSe Phillip’s Zong! and the auto-theoretical polemics of Frank Wilderson III’s Afro-Pessimism. To articulate the relationship between these two poles of contemporary black critical thought—one that voices drowned slaves through a new vocabulary assembled from court documents, the other which polemicizes against coalition as it draws the reader closer and closer to its subject’s position— my project revisits their dual origin in both the production and reception of three slave narratives. These narratives and texts, by Olaudah Equiano, Phillis Wheatley, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Jacobs, make case studies for body chapters that address what lives on the other side of the constraints of a (white, abolitionist) literary market turned field of academic study. Alongside the more direct reference within each text to the author’s awareness of their narrative’s significance to their contemporary struggle for freedom, the subsequent debates surrounding Equiano’s natality, Wheatley’s proposing of initial figural position for black speakers, and crafting of a historical fiction, and the third Jacobs’s self-metaphorization and references to the archives of enslavement, make the literary (historical) evidence in negative to the positive, radical, and ultimately ontological potentials of struggling to articulate life through an oppressive and abstract medium: the autobiography and, more broadly the written word, “the dead letter.” The formally registered “self-consciousness” of these narratives—accounts of the transition between being an object who is subject to the violence of mere syntax, and the self-objectification that results through the transaction of manumission in their becoming legitimate subjects—held in turns of phrase and figure are shown in an opening chapter to prefigure the auto-theoretical and archival methods of poetic and theoretical representations of blackness in contemporary black (literary, critical) study, just as they were the foundational pieces of “factual” evidence to the lives of the enslaved that helped to ground that field in the later 1960s.Overall, my project is aimed at recontextualizing the slave’s writing, to show it working alongside other 19th century thinkers on the displacement of universalist enlightenment categorization through the ontological propositions produced in negative by way of their phenomenological accounts of the (black) being, or more precisely of the becoming being of the black person, in text. A description and theorization of this specific becoming that extends through (black, American) literature and theory past the floodgates of emancipation, through the failure of reconstruction and the multiple waves of black renaissance and rebellion, toward the establishment of the field of black study which has produced the very poetic ontologies the field now uses to narrate, poetically reconstitute, or politically reconcile (black) lives in general. As a result, the project includes a pointed genealogy of the contemporary investigations into the being of blackness, which carries back several poetic figures or polemical theories for a black ontology, indexed above by the work of Phillip and Wilderson, but also present in that of Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Fred Moten, Hortense Spillers, Calvin Warren, Sylvia Wynter, et al. This subterrain genealogy demonstrates how the phenomenological and historiographical methods of representing and theorizing blackness developed out of and alongside the more canonical trajectory for their formulation across the 19th century and 20th century—from Hegel to Emerson to Nietzsche to Husserl to Heidegger to Sartre to Fanon to Derrida and so on. Which is to say, from the heart of the critical writing of the 19th and 20th century, the beginning of the critique of enlightenment. And that the slave narrative participates in this critique, particularly, through the deployment of several literary tactics with archival or auto-theoretical consequences—spinning false yarns about their pasts, building frame narratives, and using abstract figures to describe material conditions. These early black autobiographies are, in this light, synthetic documents that help reinvent the genre and purpose of autobiographical writing, merging the historiographical inventions of archival awareness with an auto-theorist’s poetic approach to self-preservation, and thus anticipating if not creating the field of black study as it moves and works and has it’s being today

Outcomes of stab wounds presenting to Kamuzu Central Hospital in Malawi

IntroductionInjuries are a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide, necessitating that we understand the local burden of injury to improve injury-related trauma care and patient outcomes. The characteristics, outcomes, and risk factors for mortality following stab wounds in Malawi are poorly delineated.MethodsThis is a retrospective, descriptive analysis of patients presenting to Kamuzu Central Hospital in Lilongwe, Malawi, with stab wounds from February 2008 to May 2018. Univariate and bivariate analyses were performed to compare patient and injury characteristics based on mortality. We performed Poisson multivariate regression to predict the factors that increase the relative risk of mortality. Results During the study, 32,297 patients presented with assault. Of those patients, 2,352 (7.3%) presented with stab wounds resulting in a 3.2% (n=74) overall mortality. The majority of wounds were to the head or cervical spine (n=1,043, 44.6%), while injuries to the chest (n=319, 13.7%) were less frequent. We found an increased relative risk of mortality in patients who presented with an injury to the chest (RR 3.95, 95% CI 1.79-8.72, p=0.001) and who were brought in by the police (RR 33.24, 95% CI 11.23–98.35, p<0.001). ConclusionIn this study, stab wounds accounted for 7.3% of all assault cases, with a 3.2% mortality. Though the commonest site of stab was the head, wounds to the chest conferred the highest relative risk of mortality. A multifaceted approach to reducing mortality is needed. Incorporating training of first responders in basic life support, including the police, may reduce stab-related mortality

Cost-savings achieved in two semesters through the adoption of open educational resources

Textbooks represent a significant portion of the overall cost of higher education in the United States. The burden of these costs is typically shouldered by students, those who support them, and the taxpayers who fund the grants and student loans which pay for textbooks. Open educational resources (OER) provide students a way to receive high-quality learning materials at little or no cost to students. We report on the cost savings achieved by students at eight colleges when these colleges began utilizing OER in place of traditional commercial textbooks

Rural Community Health Needs Assessment Findings: Access to Care and Mental Health

This article highlights the qualitative results from focus groups conducted as part of a Community Health Needs Assessments in two rural Georgia communities. Four 1-hr focus groups were facilitated with 32 community stakeholders. Sessions were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis identified two primary themes: mental health and barriers to accessing health care. Focus group participants discussed mental health challenges as they related to substance abuse and suicide. Participants acknowledged barriers to access, including no health insurance, cost, eligibility gaps for government-sponsored programs, the low availability of specialty care, and poverty. Addressing mental health and access to care in rural communities may require alternative, tailored programs

Effects of Acute Late Sleep Restriction on Strength, Power, and Running Speed in Recreationally Active Females

Previous research suggests that late sleep restriction (SR) paired with exercise in the morning does not have a significant impact on sport performance measures. However, this evidence is based on research conducted primarily in males. PURPOSE: To examine the effects of late sleep restriction on measures of strength, speed, and power among recreationally active females. METHODS: Twenty-three (23) recreationally active (aerobic physical activity and resistance exercise at least three times a week for six months) females participated in this study (mean age 21.5 years, BMI 23 kg/m2). A randomized, cross-over design was used under two conditions, recommended sleep (RS), and late SR. Participants performed three exercises to obtain measures; Isometric mid-thigh-pull (Relative Peak Force [RPF], Peak Force [PF], Rate of Force Development [RFD]), 20-yard sprint (time in seconds), and Counter-movement jump (Jump Height [JH], Relative Peak Power [RPP]). Conditions were separated with a 3-day resting period. For RS, participants were instructed to achieve 7h of sleep which align with the recommendation for healthy sleep length. For SR, participants subtracted three hours of sleep from the usual wake-up time with at least three hours of awake time before testing. RESULTS: No significant differences were found comparing RS and SR for all measures. CONCLUSION: Late SR did not affect measures of strength, speed, and power among recreationally active female athletes when compared to RS. These results support former research suggesting no evidence of impaired performance for strength, power, or speed with a single bout of late sleep restriction and exercise in the morning. Previous research suggests that psychomotor functioning may be affected in a greater way than gross motor functioning. Therefore, future research should consider effects of multiple, consecutive bouts of SR on performance measures as well as psychomotor functioning specifically in females