Corn, Cows, and Climate Change: How Federal Agricultural Subsidies Enable Factory Farming and Exacerbate U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions

As people around the globe grapple with the realities of an ever-warming planet, Americans, too, are coping with some of the attendant consequences of climate change: severe droughts, storms, and wildfires to name just a few. In response, Americans are evaluating their personal and collective contributions to the climate crisis. Notwithstanding President Trump’s unilateral move in June 2017 to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, the international community is pressing forward with comprehensive strategies to mitigate anthropogenic sources of atmospheric carbon. Despite their best efforts, however, most of these actions focus on the energy and transportation sectors while largely ignoring the most significant, though lesser acknowledged, climate culprit of them all: industrial animal agriculture (or “factory farming”). Like many of its international counterparts, the United States currently has no broad-based plan to mitigate carbon emissions from its livestock industry. However, if Americans can garner the political will to prioritize the climate impacts of animal agriculture, any effective emissions-reduction strategy must be multi-faceted. The strategy must address the underlying drivers of factory farming and not just livestock-related emissions. This necessarily requires an overhaul of federal crop subsidies that provide livestock producers with a glut of cheap feed grains—corn and soy, specifically—that enable them to produce meat well below its true cost. Shifting federal subsidies away from commodity crops and toward a broader array of fruits, vegetables, and nuts (or “specialty crops”) could level the playing field between commodity crop and specialty crop production. Additionally, shifting federal subsidies to specialty crops could catalyze a change in consumer choices away from carbon-intensive meat and toward more carbon-neutral, plant-based alternatives

Consolidation and other geotechnical properties of shales with respect to age and composition

Studies of a wide selection of over consolidated, weak argillaceous rocks from major formations in the United Kingdom and North America have shown that the compaction history, coupled with the mineralogical composition have a decisive bearing on the nature of the material, both at depth and in the near surface zone. Current evidence indicates that maximum depths of burial of North American sediments are generally much greater than their British counterparts; infearing that overburden does not increase systematically with age. Furthermore major differences have also been observed in the mineralogy and geochemistry of these two groups. In particular, recalculated smectite formulae indicate the onset of the montmorillonite to illite transformation in the former sediments. Preferred orientation studies and electron microscopy have been used/to elucidate the clay microstructure, whereas exchangeable cations and pore water chemistry indicate possible interactions between clay, minerals. Consolidation studies to a pressure of 35000KN/m(^2) on both undisturbed and remoulded materials have led to a new interpretation of the stress-strain response, and in addition these tests have indicated the presence of diagenetic bonding in unweathered materials the strength of which is dependent upon the maximum depth of burial and mineral species present. Furthermore, since slaking and suction experiments frequently only detect this bonding in the Caroniferous materials, it has been inferred that mineral-mineral welding is present in these and that cat ionic bonding predominates in younger sediments. Consequently to avoid unforeseen engineering complications in the field caused by the subsequent destruction of the latter bond type by weathering agents it has been suggested that a combination of suction and consolidation tests should be performed on the shales in question

Replicating analyses of item response curves using data from the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation

Ishimoto, Davenport, and Wittmann have previously reported analyses of data from student responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation (FMCE), in which they used item response curves (IRCs) to make claims about American and Japanese students’ relative likelihood to choose certain incorrect responses to some questions. We have used an independent dataset of over 6,500 American students’ responses to the FMCE to generate IRCs to test their claims. Converting the IRCs to vectors, we used dot product analysis to compare each response item quantitatively. For most questions, our analyses are consistent with Ishimoto, Davenport, and Wittmann, with some results suggesting more minor differences between American and Japanese students than previously reported. We also highlight the pedagogical advantages of using IRCs to determine the differences in response patterns for different populations to better understand student thinking prior to instruction

Ariadne: An Interface To Support Collaborative Database Browsing

This paper outlines issues in the learning of information searching skills. We report on our observations of the learning of browsing skills and the subsequent iterative development and testing of the Ariadne system -- intended to investigate and support the collaborative learning of search skills. A key part of this support is a mechanism for recording an interaction history and providing students with a visualisation of that history that they can reflect and comment upon. ARIADNE: AN INTERFACE TO SUPPORT COLLABORATIVE DATABASE BROWSING M.B. TWIDALE, D.M. NICHOLS, G. SMITH and J. TREVOR * * GMD-FIT.CSCW, Schloß Birlinghoven, D-53754 Sankt Augustin, Germany INTRODUCT ION The use of library resources has been stereotyped as a solitary activity and this view is reflected in database systems which do not have any social facilities. The actions of other users are hidden from the information searcher restricting her awareness of other searches and effectively preventing collaborative activi..

Quantitatively ranking incorrect responses to multiple-choice questions using item response theory

Research-based assessment instruments (RBAIs) are ubiquitous throughout both physics instruction and physics education research. The vast majority of analyses involving student responses to RBAI questions have focused on whether or not a student selects correct answers and using correctness to measure growth. This approach often undervalues the rich information that may be obtained by examining students’ particular choices of incorrect answers. In the present study, we aim to reveal some of this valuable information by quantitatively determining the relative correctness of various incorrect responses. To accomplish this, we propose an assumption that allows us to define relative correctness: students who have a high understanding of Newtonian physics are likely to answer more questions correctly and also more likely to choose better incorrect responses than students who have a low understanding. Analyses using item response theory align with this assumption, and Bock’s nominal response model allows us to uniquely rank each incorrect response. We present results from over 7000 students’ responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation

Quantitatively ranking incorrect responses to multiple-choice questions using item response theory

Research-based assessment instruments (RBAIs) are ubiquitous throughout both physics instruction and physics education research. The vast majority of analyses involving student responses to RBAI questions have focused on whether or not a student selects correct answers and using correctness to measure growth. This approach often undervalues the rich information that may be obtained by examining students' particular choices of incorrect answers. In the present study, we aim to reveal some of this valuable information by quantitatively determining the relative correctness of various incorrect responses. To accomplish this, we propose an assumption that allow us to define relative correctness: students who have a high understanding of Newtonian physics are likely to answer more questions correctly and also more likely to choose better incorrect responses, than students who have a low understanding. Analyses using item response theory align with this assumption, and Bock's nominal response model allows us to uniquely rank each incorrect response. We present results from over 7,000 students' responses to the Force and Motion Conceptual Evaluation

Observation of Muon Neutrino Disappearance with the MINOS Detectors in the NuMI Neutrino Beam

This Letter reports results from the MINOS experiment based on its initial exposure to neutrinos from the Fermilab NuMI beam. The rates and energy spectra of charged current ν_μ interactions are compared in two detectors located along the beam axis at distances of 1 and 735 km. With 1.27×10^(20) 120 GeV protons incident on the NuMI target, 215 events with energies below 30 GeV are observed at the Far Detector, compared to an expectation of 336±14 events. The data are consistent with ν_μ disappearance via oscillations with Δm_(32)^2|=2.74_(-0.26)^(+0.44)×10^(-3)  eV^2 and sin^2(2θ_(23))>0.87 (68% C.L.)