Turkey Production in South Dakota

The turkey is truly an American bird and suggests not only Thanksgiving to Americans but America itself to the world. The Cyclopedia of Agriculture comments that America has furnished but few domestic animals and mentions the llama of South America, the turkey, and the bison as a third possible example

New Hope for the Working Poor: Effects After Eight Years for Families and Children

Implemented in 1994 in Milwaukee, New Hope provided full-time, low-wage workers with several benefits for three years: an earnings supplement, low-cost health insurance, and subsidized child care. A random assignment study shows positive effects for both adults and children, some of which persisted five years after the program ended

Data Analytics (Ab)Use in Healthcare Fraud Audits

This study explores how government-adopted audit data analytic tools promote the abuse of power by auditors enabling politically sensitive processes that encourage industry-wide normalization of behavior. In an audit setting, we investigate how a governmental organization enables algorithmic decision-making to alter power relationships to effect organizational and industry-wide change. While prior research has identified discriminatory threats emanating from the deployment of algorithmic decision-making, the effects of algorithmic decision-making on inherently imbalanced power relationships have received scant attention. Our results provide empirical evidence of how systemic and episodic power relationships strengthen each other, thereby enabling the governmental organization to effect social change that might be too politically prohibitive to enact directly. Overall, the results suggest that there are potentially negative effects caused by the use of algorithmic decision-making and the resulting power shifts, and these effects create a different view of the level of purported success attained through auditor use of data analytics

Method for molding structural parts utilizing modified silicone rubber

This invention improves upon a method for molding structural parts from preform material. Preform material to be used for the part is provided. A silicone rubber composition containing entrained air voids is prepared. The silicone rubber and preform material assembly is situated within a rigid mold cavity used to shape the preform material to the desired shape. The entire assembly is heated in a standard heating device so that the thermal expansion on the silicone rubber exerts the pressure necessary to force the preform material into contact with the mold container. The introduction of discrete air voids into the silicone rubber allows for accurately controlled pressure application on the preform material at the cure temperature

ADHD in context: Young adults’ reports of the impact of occupational environment on the manifestation of ADHD

Does changing context play a role in the decline in ADHD symptoms in adulthood? Insufficient research has explored the functioning of adults with ADHD. As adults, individuals with ADHD have significantly more latitude to control aspects of their day-to-day environments. Do the new contexts young adults find themselves in alter their experience of ADHD? Are there particular occupational or educational contexts in which young adults report functioning better than others

A Cognitive Model of an Epistemic Community: Mapping the Dynamics of Shallow Lake Ecosystems

We used fuzzy cognitive mapping (FCM) to develop a generic shallow lake ecosystem model by augmenting the individual cognitive maps drawn by 8 scientists working in the area of shallow lake ecology. We calculated graph theoretical indices of the individual cognitive maps and the collective cognitive map produced by augmentation. The graph theoretical indices revealed internal cycles showing non-linear dynamics in the shallow lake ecosystem. The ecological processes were organized democratically without a top-down hierarchical structure. The steady state condition of the generic model was a characteristic turbid shallow lake ecosystem since there were no dynamic environmental changes that could cause shifts between a turbid and a clearwater state, and the generic model indicated that only a dynamic disturbance regime could maintain the clearwater state. The model developed herein captured the empirical behavior of shallow lakes, and contained the basic model of the Alternative Stable States Theory. In addition, our model expanded the basic model by quantifying the relative effects of connections and by extending it. In our expanded model we ran 4 simulations: harvesting submerged plants, nutrient reduction, fish removal without nutrient reduction, and biomanipulation. Only biomanipulation, which included fish removal and nutrient reduction, had the potential to shift the turbid state into clearwater state. The structure and relationships in the generic model as well as the outcomes of the management simulations were supported by actual field studies in shallow lake ecosystems. Thus, fuzzy cognitive mapping methodology enabled us to understand the complex structure of shallow lake ecosystems as a whole and obtain a valid generic model based on tacit knowledge of experts in the field.Comment: 24 pages, 5 Figure

Fisheries management influences phytoplankton biomass of Amazonian floodplain lakes

Tropical floodplains secure the protein supply of millions of people, but only sound management can ensure the long-term continuity of such ecosystem services. Overfishing is a widespread threat to multitrophic systems, but how it affects ecosystem functioning is poorly understood, particularly in tropical freshwater food webs. Models based on temperate lakes frequently assume that primary producers are mostly bottom-up controlled by nutrient and light limitations, with negligible effects of top-down forces. Yet this assumption remains untested in complex tropical freshwater systems experiencing marked spatiotemporal variation. We use consolidated community-based fisheries management practices and spatial zoning to test the relative importance of bottom-up versus top-down drivers of phytoplankton biomass, controlling for the influence of local to landscape heterogeneity. Our study focuses on 58 large Amazonian floodplain lakes under different management regimes that resulted in a gradient of apex-predator abundance. These lakes, distributed along ~600 km of a major tributary of the Amazon River, varied widely in size, structure, landscape context, and hydrological seasonality. Using generalised linear models, we show that community-based fisheries management, which controls the density of apex predators, is the strongest predictor of phytoplankton biomass during the dry season, when lakes become discrete landscape units. Water transparency also emerges as an important bottom-up factor, but phosphorus, nitrogen and several lake and landscape metrics had minor or no effects on phytoplankton biomass. During the wet-season food pulse, when lakes become connected to adjacent water bodies and homogenise the landscape, only lake depth explained phytoplankton biomass. Synthesis and applications. Tropical freshwaters fisheries typically assume that fish biomass is controlled by bottom-up mechanisms, so that overexploitation of large predators would not affect overall ecosystem productivity. Our results, however, show that top-down forces are important drivers of primary productivity in tropical lakes, above and beyond the effects of bottom-up factors. This helps us to understand the enormous success of community-based ‘fishing agreements’ in the Amazon. Multiple stakeholders should embrace socio-ecological management practices that shape both bottom-up and top-down forces to ensure biodiversity protection, sustainable fisheries yields and food security for local communities and regional economies

Political activism across the life course

The study of political activism has neglected people’s personal and social relationships to time. Age, life course and generation have become increasing important experiences for understanding political participation and political outcomes (e.g. Brexit), and current policies of austerity across the world are affecting people of all ages. At a time when social science is struggling to understand the rapid and unexpected changes to the current political landscape, the essay argues that the study of political activism can be enriched by engaging with the temporal dimensions of people’s everyday social experiences because it enables the discovery of political activism in mundane activities as well as in banal spaces. The authors suggest that a values-based approach that focuses on people’s relationships of concern would be a suitable way to surface contemporary political sites and experiences of activism across the life course and for different generations