What did Aspiring Young Entrepreneurs in Nicaragua Recognize as Agribusiness and Ecotourism Opportunities using Photovoice as a Data Collection Tool?

Interest in entrepreneurship education by scholars and practitioners as a way to overcome poverty is growing. Yet little is known about how entrepreneurship can be a successful approach to achieving prosperity in resource-poor conditions. Entrepreneurship has been mainly associated with the view of entrepreneurs as super humans capable of solving all problems, especially if operating in resource-rich contexts. This qualitative study’s purpose was to explore, through photovoice methodology, the entrepreneurial opportunities involving agribusiness and ecotourism that Nicaraguan students recognized in their communities. Photovoice allowed the researchers to gain in-depth information from students who expressed in images what may have been difficult to explain in words. The students recognized different opportunities linked to their contexts as expressed through photos documenting local assets and materials. The study participants also indicated interests in doing social good, which suggested a more societally oriented view of entrepreneurship. The poor, including youth often marginalized, were able to recognize business opportunities in concert with their economic conditions. Opportunity recognition may be one of the more promising ways to overcome poverty. Its facilitation holds implications for agricultural, tourism, and rural development curricula and educational programming

Technology transfer from NASA to targeted industries, volume 2

This volume contains the following materials to support Volume 1: (1) Survey of Metal Fabrication Industry in Alabama; (2) Survey of Electronics Manufacturing/Assembly Industry in Alabama; (3) Apparel Modular Manufacturing Simulators; (4) Synopsis of a Stereolithography Project; (5) Transferring Modular Manufacturing Technology to an Apparel Firm; (6) Letters of Support; (7) Fact Sheets; (8) Publications; and (9) One Stop Access to NASA Technology Brochure

Review of the Interactions between Catfishes and Freshwater Mollusks in North America

Catfishes are important in freshwater ecosystems not only as consumers, but also as essential partners in symbiotic relationships with other organisms. Freshwater mollusks are among the many organisms that have interactions with catfishes. For example, ictalurids are hosts for larvae of several native freshwater mussel species. The larvae, which attach briefly to gills or fins of fish to complete their development to the free-living juvenile stage, disperse via upstream and downstream movement of host fish. In turn, freshwater mussels serve as a food source for some catfish species while other catfish species may use spent mussel shells for habitat. Ictalurids also benefit from the conservation status of many freshwater mussel species. Federal and state laws protecting these invertebrates can preserve water quality and habitat and, at times, provide incentives and funding for conservation and restoration of stream and riparian habitats

Using airborne LiDAR Survey to explore historic-era archaeological landscapes of Montserrat in the eastern Caribbean

This article describes what appears to be the first archaeological application of airborne LiDAR survey to historic-era landscapes in the Caribbean archipelago, on the island of Montserrat. LiDAR is proving invaluable in extending the reach of traditional pedestrian survey into less favorable areas, such as those covered by dense neotropical forest and by ashfall from the past two decades of active eruptions by the Soufrière Hills volcano, and to sites in localities that are inaccessible on account of volcanic dangers. Emphasis is placed on two aspects of the research: first, the importance of ongoing, real-time interaction between the LiDAR analyst and the archaeological team in the field; and second, the advantages of exploiting the full potential of the three-dimensional LiDAR point cloud data for purposes of the visualization of archaeological sites and features

African Entrepreneurs’ Perceptions on the Mentoring Provided by a Cross-cultural Professional Development Experience: Implications for Future Program

We conducted a multicase investigation to assess the impacts of a cross-cultural exchange program on Entrepreneur Fellows from Kenya, South Africa, and Uganda (8 women; 14 men) after they had returned home from the United States. Our assessment included the mentoring aspect of the program. Six questions and related probes guided semi-structured interviews with the 22 Fellows, the study’s quintain. The lead researcher transcribed the study’s interviews and verified accuracy and trustworthiness by sending her transcriptions to the Fellows for verification. Findings derived from the interviews or cases crystallized as themes representative of the quintain. The emergent themes, which included mentoring, inspired two theoretical lenses to guide our interpretation of the Fellows’ experiences: human capital theory and theory of planned behavior. Recommendations for practice include additional training of entrepreneur mentors and suggestions to facilitate high-quality field experiences. Additional research examining participants’ views about mentoring – protégés and their mentors – as an integral component of entrepreneurial training in cross-cultural settings, and how that can be improved, would likely enhance the learning outcomes of similar programs

Pulsar Timing with the Parkes Radio Telescope for the Fermi Mission

We report here on two years of timing of 168 pulsars using the Parkes radio telescope. The vast majority of these pulsars have spin-down luminosities in excess of 10^34 erg/s and are prime target candidates to be detected in gamma-rays by the Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope. We provide the ephemerides for the ten pulsars being timed at Parkes which have been detected by Fermi in its first year of operation. These ephemerides, in conjunction with the publicly available photon list, can be used to generate gamma-ray profiles from the Fermi archive. We will make the ephemerides of any pulsars of interest available to the community upon request. In addition to the timing ephemerides, we present the parameters for 14 glitches which have occurred in 13 pulsars, seven of which have no previously known glitch history. The Parkes timing programme, in conjunction with Fermi observations, is expected to continue for at least the next four years.Comment: Accepted for publication in PASA.12 page

Selection of both habitat and genes in specialized and endangered caribou

Genetic mechanisms determining habitat selection and specialization of individuals within species have been hypothesized, but not tested at the appropriate individual level in nature. In this work, we analyzed habitat selection for 139 GPS-collared caribou belonging to 3 declining ecotypes sampled throughout Northwestern Canada. We used Resource Selection Functions comparing resources at used and available locations. We found that the 3 caribou ecotypes differed in their use of habitat suggesting specialization. On expected grounds, we also found differences in habitat selection between summer and winter, but also, originally, among the individuals within an ecotype. We next obtained Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (SNPs) for the same caribou individuals, we detected those associated to habitat selection, and then identified genes linked to these SNPs. These genes had functions related in other organisms to habitat and dietary specializations, and climatic adaptations. We therefore suggest that individual variation in habitat selection was based on genotypic variation in the SNPs of individual caribou, indicating that genetic forces underlie habitat and diet selection in the species. We also suggest that the associations between habitat and genes that we detected may lead to lack of resilience in the species, thus contributing to caribou endangerment. Our work emphasizes that similar mechanisms may exist for other specialized, endangered species

Genomic legacy of migration in endangered caribou

Wide-ranging animals, including migratory species, are significantly threatened by the effects of habitat fragmentation and habitat loss. In the case of terrestrial mammals, this results in nearly a quarter of species being at risk of extinction. Caribou are one such example of a wide-ranging, migratory, terrestrial, and endangered mammal. In populations of caribou, the proportion of individuals considered as “migrants” can vary dramatically. There is therefore a possibility that, under the condition that migratory behavior is genetically determined, those individuals or populations that are migratory will be further impacted by humans, and this impact could result in the permanent loss of the migratory trait in some populations. However, genetic determination of migration has not previously been studied in an endangered terrestrial mammal. We examined migratory behavior of 139 GPS-collared endangered caribou in western North America and carried out genomic scans for the same individuals. Here we determine a genetic subdivision of caribou into a Northern and a Southern genetic cluster. We also detect >50 SNPs associated with migratory behavior, which are in genes with hypothesized roles in determining migration in other organisms. Furthermore, we determine that propensity to migrate depends upon the proportion of ancestry in individual caribou, and thus on the evolutionary history of its migratory and sedentary subspecies. If, as we report, migratory behavior is influenced by genes, caribou could be further impacted by the loss of the migratory trait in some isolated populations already at low numbers. Our results indicating an ancestral genetic component also suggest that the migratory trait and their associated genetic mutations could not be easily re-established when lost in a population