Automated selection of topographic base information for thematic maps

Modern GIS are capable of producing well designed maps but offer little assistance to users with little cartographc knowledge. Maps which are produced by such users may have a lot of cartographic errors and be of poor design. Thus, it is very necessary to build cartographic knowledge into GIS to help users to make effective use of such programs and produce basic maps conforming to basic principles of design. One possible way of improving map design in GIS is to build cartographic knowledge into the system. One particular area where such cartographic knowledge could be applied is in the selection of base (topographic) information for special topic maps. The selection will depend upon map topic, map purpose, map scale, and the amount of detail required for the particular map. A topographic database at 1:250 000 has been used to starting point for this study and the scale of output maps limited to the 1:250 000 to 1:1000 000 range. To build a knowledge base of map content, published maps have been examined, and two aspects have been considered: maps with the same topic at different scales; and maps at the same scale but with different topics. For further development to the knowledge base, a questionnaire has been sent to cartographers and expert map users to determine what they consider should be the map content for maps on a range of topics at several scales. An initial examination of the knowledge base produced from the survey of published mapping highlights some anomalies, but by using the knowledge of the cartographers and map users, the knowledge base is revised. To apply this knowledge, a formula for selecting appropriate base information is tested and the results show that the approach does produce satisfactory results. It is suggested this is implemented within a GIS to allow users to focus on the analysis data, with maps produced having appropriate base information depending on the topic, scale and the required level of detail automatically

Producer Preferences for Alternative Irrigation Practices in the Arkansas Delta

We use a bivariate sample selection model to address peer network effects on participation in and/or intensity of use of land being irrigated by alternative irrigation practices in the state of Arkansas. As groundwater in the state becomes more limited, the use of scientific scheduling, flowmeters, and more efficient row crop water application systems will allow producers to better manage water resources. We find relatively large, positive relationships between belonging to a peer network of the same irrigation practice and participation in that practice. Intensity of use of alternative irrigation techniques is mostly influenced by which crop type the practice is associated with and income

Home v. Hospital: Power and Birth, An Examination of Control Within Birth Models in the United States

In this paper I examine why some women in the United States choose midwife attended homebirth over the medical model of birth. Why do women make this decision and what are the outcomes? I examined both qualitative and quantitative data on homebirths and have identified key reasons why women chose to give birth outside of the hospital. I focused on how the mother\u27s feelings of control impacted her satisfaction with the birth experience, and how women’s control is affected in home versus hospitalized birth. My findings reveal that home births allow the woman more agency and an environment in which she feels empowered. In my research I focused on low-risk, planned home births, attended by a certified nurse midwife. I was interested in finding out why some women are choosing home birth in a society where there is a strong cultural norm of giving birth in a hospital. Through my research, I found the main reason women choose home birth is because they strongly believe they have more control of the birth experience at home than in the hospital. I have identified two main factors that affect women\u27s feelings of control during birth: (1) The health care provider’s ideas about interventions matching the mothers, and (2) the power balance between the healthcare provider and the mother

From Protest Song to Social Song: Music and Politics in Colombia, 1966-2016

Based on archival and ethnographic fieldwork in the cities of Bogotá and Medellín, this dissertation documents the development of canción protesta (protest song) in Colombia in the 1960s, and tracks its evolution in subsequent decades. At the turn of the 1970s, songwriters affiliated with a grassroots canción protesta movement in Bogotá used music as a vehicle for disseminating leftist political ideology and extolling the revolutionary guerrilla groups that had formed in the Colombian countryside in the preceding years. However, canción protesta was an urban phenomenon that emerged in tandem with other countercultural currents, and their confluence in the late 1960s facilitated the rise of a commercial variant of protest song in the 1970s, the reception of which was politically mixed. By the 1980s, many activist-musicians were breaking away from what they viewed as the crudely propagandist song texts of the prior decade. To make sense of protest song’s shifting guises, I situate them in broader discourses of and about resistance, emphasizing the ways in which the resistant dimensions of oppositional music have been discursively articulated in changing political contexts. During the 1990s, the category of canción social (social song) began to replace the term canción protesta in public discourse. While canción social generally denotes the same music that was formerly labelled as canción protesta, it embraces a wider range of artists and carries different associations. One of the central arguments of the dissertation is that the terminological shift from canción protesta to canción social represents a profound transformation, over the course of five decades of civil conflict, in Colombian society’s relationship with the idea of pursuing political change through armed resistance