VALUING BOTANIC COLLECTIONS: A COMBINED TRAVEL-COST AND CONTINGENT VALUATION SURVEY IN AUSTRALIA

The economic value of biological collections in three major botanic gardens in Australia was estimated using the Travel-Cost (TC) and Contingent Valuation (CV) methods. The study used truncated count data models to control for the non-negative integer and truncation properties of the number of visits to botanic gardens in Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney. We estimate consumer surplus values of approximately $34 per trip to each botanic garden, resulting in the total social welfare estimate of approximately$96.9 million in 2010 Australian dollars. This result is relatively high compared to similar studies conducted in other countries. Willingness to pay (WTP) for entry fees and or higher parking charges for access to botanic gardens were also investigated. Results indicate a positive mean WTP of approximately $3-$4 per trip per person. These findings will be useful for resource management decisions in the botanic gardens and other biological collections in Australia.Economic value, botanic gardens, biological collections, willingness to pay, travel-cost method, contingent valuation method., Resource /Energy Economics and Policy,

Saving an Endangered Subject: High School History in Ontario Schools, 1960-2010

The rise, fall, and revival of History in Ontario high schools is full of twists and turns. History as an academic subject, once king of the social sciences, came, over the period 1960 to 2010, to occupy a smaller and smaller patch of the secondary school curriculum. Building upon insights gleaned from Bob Davis’ 1995 book Whatever Happened to High School History?, veteran teacher, textbook writer and education professor Paul W. Bennett analyzes the impact of rise of the “new social studies” in the 1970s, the spread of the so-called “skills mania” of the 1980s, and the demise of the prevailing national narrative on the teaching of the subject. Summoning up lessons learned in the Ontario history classroom, he demonstrates how the fragmentation of the history-centred social studies curriculum contributed to the so-called “Canadian History Crisis” of the 1990s. In the wake of the 1995 Quebec Referendum, the teaching of Canadian history resurfaced as a major public policy issue. The recent advent of the “Historical Thinking” movement, sparked by UBC education professor Peter Seixas, signalled the beginning of a more recent revival and Trent University historian Christopher Dummitt’s 2009 call in Contesting Clio’s Craft to “move beyond inclusion” has begun to close the gap in the teaching of history between the university and high school levels

Up Against 'Edutopia': Dr. James Daly's Crusade against the Spectre of Progressive Education, 1968-1983.

Over forty years ago, an Ontario Provincial Committee headed by Emmett Hall and Lloyd Dennis released Living and Learning (1968), a bold and provocative progressive reform prescription for the perceived ills afflicting the Ontario public school system. One of the most strident critics of the Hall-Dennis Report was Dr. James Daly, a little known McMaster University English history professor, who responded with a stinging critique in the form of a political pamphlet-sized book entitled Education or Molasses: A Critical Look at the Hall-Dennis Report (1969). While Daly’s little book echoed the essential message of Hilda Neatby’s So Little for the Mind (1953), it never attracted the same popular acclaim. Many Ontario educators from regular classroom teachers to academics sympathized with Daly, but few rallied to his defence in the ensuing public debate. This article explores Dr. Daly’s personal crusade and assesses why it fizzled in the public arena, yet actually helped to turn the tide in the 1980s backlash against the Hall-Dennis brand of ‘romantic progressive’ reform

Aircraft thrust control

An integrated control system for coaxial counterrotating aircraft propulsors driven by a common gas turbine engine. The system establishes an engine pressure ratio by control of fuel flow and uses the established pressure ratio to set propulsor speed. Propulsor speed is set by adjustment of blade pitch

Time and Space Bounds for Reversible Simulation

We prove a general upper bound on the tradeoff between time and space that suffices for the reversible simulation of irreversible computation. Previously, only simulations using exponential time or quadratic space were known. The tradeoff shows for the first time that we can simultaneously achieve subexponential time and subquadratic space. The boundary values are the exponential time with hardly any extra space required by the Lange-McKenzie-Tapp method and the ($\log 3$)th power time with square space required by the Bennett method. We also give the first general lower bound on the extra storage space required by general reversible simulation. This lower bound is optimal in that it is achieved by some reversible simulations.Comment: 11 pages LaTeX, Proc ICALP 2001, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Vol xxx Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 200

A Closed-Form Expression for the Gravitational Radiation Rate from Cosmic Strings

We present a new formula for the rate at which cosmic strings lose energy into gravitational radiation, valid for all piecewise-linear cosmic string loops. At any time, such a loop is composed of $N$ straight segments, each of which has constant velocity. Any cosmic string loop can be arbitrarily-well approximated by a piecewise-linear loop with $N$ sufficiently large. The formula is a sum of $O(N^4)$ polynomial and log terms, and is exact when the effects of gravitational back-reaction are neglected. For a given loop, the large number of terms makes evaluation ``by hand" impractical, but a computer or symbolic manipulator yields accurate results. The formula is more accurate and convenient than previous methods for finding the gravitational radiation rate, which require numerical evaluation of a four-dimensional integral for each term in an infinite sum. It also avoids the need to estimate the contribution from the tail of the infinite sum. The formula has been tested against all previously published radiation rates for different loop configurations. In the cases where discrepancies were found, they were due to errors in the published work. We have isolated and corrected both the analytic and numerical errors in these cases. To assist future work in this area, a small catalog of results for some simple loop shapes is provided.Comment: 29 pages TeX, 16 figures and computer C-code available via anonymous ftp from directory pub/pcasper at alpha1.csd.uwm.edu, WISC-MILW-94-TH-10, (section 7 has been expanded, two figures added, and minor grammatical changes made.

New Records of Vascular Plants in the Yukon Territory VIII

Forty-seven taxa, 35 native and 12 introduced, are reported as new to the flora of Yukon and nine taxa previously reported are deleted. The new native taxa are: Artemisia arctica ssp. comata, Botrychium alaskense, Botrychium minganense, Bromus richardsonii, Calamagrostis holmii, Carex incurviformis, Carex mackenziei, Carex microchaeta ssp. nesophila, Carex ramenskii, Carex rariflora var. androgyna, Carex tahoensis, Carex xerantica, Carex × flavicans, Deschampsia sukatschewii, Eleocharis erythropoda, Eleocharis macrostachya, Eleocharis mamillata, Erigeron ochroleucus, Impatiens noli-tangere, Limnorchis huronensis, Nymphaea tetragona, Polygonum douglasii ssp. douglasii, Potamogeton natans, Potentilla crebridens ssp. hemicryophila, Puccinellia tenella ssp. langeana, Rumex beringensis, Salix farriae, Salix glauca ssp. Stipuli fera, Saussurea nuda, Saxifraga hyperborea, Saxifraga rivularis ssp. arctolitoralis, Silene soczavana var. macrosperma, Symphyotrichum subspicatum, Taraxacum hyparcticum, and Zannichellia palustris. The new introduced taxa are: Acer negundo, Avena fatua, Camelina microcarpa, Crepis capillaris, Hippophae rhamnoides, Lamium amplexicaule, Linaria dalmatica, Medicago lupulina, Prunus padus, Rumex pseudonatronatus, Valeriana officinale, and Viola tricolor. Deleted taxa are: Aster laevis var. geyeri, Carex athrostachya, Elatine triantha, Camelina sativa, Erysimum cheiri, Galium palustre, Impatiens capensis, Platanthera hyperborea, and Sonchus oleraceus. Vouchers are cited and general notes on distribution and identification are provided. Four of the native taxa reported here are new to Canada: Botrychium alaskense, Carex microchaeta ssp. nesophila, Potentilla crebridens ssp. hemicryophila and Rumex beringensis

Optimizing Reliability of Digital Inclinometer and Flexicurve Ruler Measures of Spine Curvatures in Postmenopausal Women with Osteoporosis of the Spine: An Illustration of the Use of Generalizability Theory

The study illustrates the application of generalizability theory (G-theory) to identify measurement protocols that optimize reliability of two clinical methods for assessing spine curvatures in women with osteoporosis. Triplicate measures of spine curvatures were acquired for 9 postmenopausal women with spine osteoporosis by two raters during a single visit using a digital inclinometer and a flexicurve ruler. G-coefficients were estimated using a G-study, and a measurement protocol that optimized inter-rater and inter-trial reliability was identified using follow-up decision studies. The G-theory provides reliability estimates for measurement devices which can be generalized to different clinical contexts and/or measurement designs