The Ethics of Troubled Images

This special issue of Cultural Studies Review brings together an interdisciplinary range of scholarship to investigate the ethical implications of troubled images

Algal Biodiversity Survey of the Middle Chattahoochee River Using DNA Metabarcoding

Aquatic plants play vital roles in water systems by providing ecological services, and one group that is understudied is algae. Algae play a crucial role in water systems as bioindicators and primary producers. They can be challenging to identify with the naked eye, so researchers have been using DNA metabarcoding, where DNA belonging to specific taxa can be isolated and identified from water samples. The objective of this study was to conduct an algal biodiversity survey on the middle Chattahoochee River system in Georgia. Water samples (1L) were filtered and sent to RTL Genomics for sequencing and processing; the data was then analyzed through PAST software to create diversity indices. Overall, time of sampling, lake population, and the interaction between the two showed significance for the following variables: number of individuals, number of taxa, Simpson diversity index, dominance, Shannon diversity index, and evenness. Future recommendations include increasing the number and type of sampling locations and the inclusion of samples collected throughout the year. The preliminary assessment of algae diversity presented here will provide future guidance for water quality management and biodiversity conservation along the middle Chattahoochee River

Son of Saul and the ethics of representation: troubling the figure of the child

Taking László Nemes’ film Son of Saul (2015) as both an aesthetic intervention into the public remembering of the Holocaust and as a critical/creative essay on representations of the horrors of war and violence more generally, this paper considers its use of the image and idea of the dead child—the child victim—and its ability to move, to communicate, to galvanise action, to seemingly cut through the chaos of communication. A figure presented as tangible and mournable in a way that the many anonymous, barely-glimpsed and largely ignored dead of the film are not, we consider it in relation to previous representations of the child in Holocaust film, but also, importantly, in relation to contemporary photographic examples of the child victim-as-icon, whose images seemingly require no caption to communicate and which inspire deeply-felt responses across cultures, organising structures of public feeling. As Nemes’ film makes clear, the claim of the child victim on the witness is profound, immediate, and potentially transformative. We will consider how the image of the child operates as a fluid signifier of both hope and despair, shared desires and fears, a not-unproblematic image through which the obscene and the unthinkable are mediated and made visible

Piloting sidewalk delivery robots in Pittsburgh, Miami-Dade County, Detroit and San Jose: Knight Autonomous Vehicle Initiative

The Knight Autonomous Vehicle (AV) Initiative is a multi-year collaborative effort between the Urbanism Next Center at the University of Oregon, Cityfi, the cities of Detroit, Pittsburgh, and San José, and Miami-Dade County (the "cohort") to pilot and learn about automated mobility technologies today to shape the future of deployment tomorrow.The four jurisdictions had originally planned to test passenger AV pilots but due to both the Covid-19 pandemic and changes in the AV market, these were substituted for automated delivery pilots. With this transition, the cohort partnered with Kiwibot to learn more about a new technology—sidewalk delivery robots. Through this partnership, Kiwibot tested different use cases and collaborated on community engagement opportunities in each locale. Given the proliferation of bills being passed by state legislatures legalizing deployment of personal delivery devices (PDDs) or sidewalk robots, and the increased delivery demand due to the pandemic, the pilots were well timed to able to meaningfully inform the cohort cities about the potential benefits and challenges of sidewalk delivery robots.This report provides an overview of the pilot design in each locale, presents key findings, and offers a set of recommendations based on the cohort's experiences. Pilots are often time-intensive and challenging to pull off, but they also provide valuable learnings, and these pilots were no exception

An Evaluation Review: Improving the Diets and Minds of School-Aged Youth through Gardening- and Cooking-Enhanced Nutrition Education

This paper provides an evaluation review of gardening- and cooking-enhanced nutrition education programs for a community organization in Durham, North Carolina: Durham Public Schools' Hub Farm. The review will outline the need for gardening- and cooking-enhanced nutrition education programs in relation to children's dietary patterns, and review three promising models from different organizations across the country, including an additional program description of the Hub Farm's "Seed to Belly" model. Finally, this paper will provide concrete recommendations for the Hub Farm, including recommendations around program and evaluation design, expected outcomes, measurement and more comprehensive school health models. The hope is that these recommendations will inform curriculum and program design, in order to ensure program effectiveness for school-aged youth in Durham.Master of Public Healt

Informing Policy on Volunteer Service Through Agency-Based Evaluations

This working paper describes the evidence-based policy making process. We focus on what information is needed to inform policy development and decision-making on volunteer service and then how this information can be most effectively disseminated to policy makers, outlining a range of specific strategies. Existing volunteer service research is used as illustration. Implications are drawn for the capacity of agency staff to implement the research methods and strategies that are discussed

Experience Corps: Pathway to New Engagement

Experience Corps: Pathway to New Engagemen

Stratigraphic forward modelling of distributive fluvial systems based on the Huesca System, Ebro Basin, Northern Spain

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This project was part of a doctoral project financed through a studentship by the United Kingdom Research and Innovation Centre for Doctoral Training in Oil and Gas, which was institutionally funded by the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. An academic licence of the stratigraphic forward modelling software SedsimX was provided by StrataMod Pty. Ltd, Australia. The authors want to thank John Wood, Prabhat Hegde and Ramy Abdallah for their help with coding of the model processing scripts. We also want to thank the developers of Python, its interface Spyder and its libraries Pandas, NumPy, Math, Statistics and Matplotlib.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

A Case for Stipends in Volunteer Service

Long-term, intensive volunteer roles in civic service programs are often stipended, meaning volunteers receive monetary support for their time commitment that is considerably below market wages. The effect of stipends on role uptake, performance, and perceived benefits is not known. In this study, we seek to understand the role of stipends as an institutional facilitator. Using data from a longitudinal study of older adults serving in the national service program Experience Corps (N=263), we assess stipend status relative to volunteer socio-demographic characteristics, characteristics of the service experience, and volunteers’ perceived benefits. Overall, we find that stipends may promote participant diversity. Stipended older adult volunteers also serve for longer periods of time than non-stipended volunteers and their motivations for serving are as altruistic as non-stipended volunteers. Finally, stipended volunteers report higher perceived benefits of participation than non-stipended volunteers. These results suggest that stipends may promote program inclusion, efficiency, and effectiveness

Reexamining Impacts of the Mission Continues Fellowship Program on Post-9/11 Veterans, Their Families, and Their Communities

Reexamining Impacts of the Mission Continues Fellowship Program on Post-9/11 Veterans, Their Families, and Their Communitie