Snowmelt timing alters shallow but not deep soil moisture in the Sierra Nevada

Roughly one-third of the Earth's land surface is seasonally covered by snow. In many of these ecosystems, the spring snowpack is melting earlier due to climatic warming and atmospheric dust deposition, which could greatly modify soil water resources during the growing season. Though snowmelt timing is known to influence soil water availability during summer, there is little known about the depth of the effects and how long the effects persist. We therefore manipulated the timing of seasonal snowmelt in a high-elevation mixed-conifer forest in a Mediterranean climate during consecutive wet and dry years. The snow-all-gone (SAG) date was advanced by 6 days in the wet year and 3 days in the dry year using black sand to reduce the snow surface albedo. To maximize variation in snowmelt timing, we also postponed the SAG date by 8 days in the wet year and 16 days in the dry year using white fabric to shade the snowpack from solar radiation. We found that deeper soil water (30-60 cm) did not show a statistically significant response to snowmelt timing. Shallow soil water (0-30 cm), however, responded strongly to snowmelt timing. The drying effect of accelerated snowmelt lasted 2 months in the 0-15 cm depth and at least 4 months in the 15-30 cm depth. Therefore, the legacy of snowmelt timing on soil moisture can persist through dry periods, and continued earlier snowmelt due to climatic warming and windblown dust could reduce near-surface water storage and availability to plants and soil biota. Key Points The hydrological signal of snowmelt timing was strongest in shallow soil Effects of snowmelt timing on soil moisture lasted 2-4 months Advancing snowmelt timing by 2-3 weeks depleted shallow soil water by one third © 2014. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved

The Colour Red

A young thieving woman gets taken by a group of rebels seeking her help to stage a rebellion. Their society lingers on the brink of civil war, and she, in joining them, finally chooses a side. As she begins to learn more about this rebel group and their motives for wanting a war, pieces of her tragic past begin to surface and give her her own reasons for joining the fight

The Washington Equal Access to Justice Act: A Substantial Proposal for Reform

Under the Washington Administrative Procedures Act, a party can challenge an agency action in superior court. The Washington Legislature adopted the Equal Access to Justice Act, which provides fees to qualified parties that prevail in judicial reviews of agency actions, to encourage individuals and small businesses to oppose unjust agency actions. The effectiveness of this fee-shifting provision is significantly limited because awards are not authorized when a court decides that the agency action is substantially justified. The legislature should remove this limitation. Where the agency action involves factual determinations or the interpretation of statutes or regulations within the expertise of the challenged agency, the standard for reviewing the underlying agency action (which turns on a determination of reasonableness) makes the substantial-justification limit redundant. Where the agency action involves questions of pure law, the limit thwarts the legislature\u27s goal of encouraging individuals to oppose unjust agency actions for their own and society\u27s benefit

Characteristic preferences in mate selection among college students : a comparison study spanning the late twentieth century into the early twenty-first century.

This study was designed to explore the preferred characteristics of mate selection. Additionally, this study sought to determine preferences by sex, age, and over time. As a matter of geographical convenience and also in recognition of a population ripe for mate selection, students enrolled in a semester-long, family-related, cross-listed undergraduate and graduate course at a Midwestern regional university comprised the subject base. After a verbal solicitation from their professor, with neither positive nor negative consequence for participation, amenable students completed a voluntary survey regarding their preferred characteristics when seeking a mate. Overall and without regard to sex, age, or time, the leading two characteristics were Warm and Affectionate and Good Sense of Humor. A series of independent samples one-way t-tests were performed, which showed several statistically significant differences between the sexes, among the age groups, and across time. This study is quite helpful in understanding which characteristics are most important for those choosing a mate

Quantifying the legacy of snowmelt timing on soil greenhouse gas emissions in a seasonally dry montane forest.

The release of water during snowmelt orchestrates a variety of important belowground biogeochemical processes in seasonally snow-covered ecosystems, including the production and consumption of greenhouse gases (GHGs) by soil microorganisms. Snowmelt timing is advancing rapidly in these ecosystems, but there is still a need to isolate the effects of earlier snowmelt on soil GHG fluxes. For an improved mechanistic understanding of the biogeochemical effects of snowmelt timing during the snow-free period, we manipulated a high-elevation forest that typically receives over two meters of snowfall but little summer precipitation to influence legacy effects of snowmelt timing. We altered snowmelt rates for two years using black sand to accelerate snowmelt and white fabric to postpone snowmelt, thus creating a two- to three-week disparity in snowmelt timing. Soil microclimate and fluxes of carbon dioxide (CO2 ), methane (CH4 ), and nitrous oxide (N2 O) were monitored weekly to monthly during the snow-free period. Microbial abundances were estimated by potential assays near the end of each snow-free period. Although earlier snowmelt caused soil drying, we found no statistically significant effects (p < 0.05) of altered snowmelt timing on fluxes of CO2 or N2 O, or soil microbial abundances. Soil CH4 fluxes, however, did respond to snowmelt timing, with 18% lower rates of CH4 uptake in the earlier snowmelt treatment, but only after a dry winter. Cumulative CO2 emission and CH4 uptake were 43% and 88% greater, respectively, after the dry winter. We conclude that soil GHG fluxes can be surprisingly resistant to hydrological changes associated with earlier snowmelt, likely because of persistent moisture and microbial activities in deeper mineral soils. As a result, a drier California in the future may cause seasonally snow-covered soils in the Sierra Nevada to emit more GHGs, not less

Teaching Information Literacy Skills to Sophomore-Level Biology Majors

Many undergraduate students lack a sound understanding of information literacy. The skills that comprise information literacy are particularly important when combined with scientific writing for biology majors as they are the foundation skills necessary to complete upper-division biology course assignments, better train students for research projects, and prepare students for graduate and professional education. To help undergraduate biology students develop and practice information literacy and scientific writing skills, a series of three one-hour hands-on library sessions, discussions, and homework assignments were developed for Biological Literature, a one-credit, one-hour-per-week, required sophomore-level course. The embedded course librarian developed a learning exercise that reviewed how to conduct database and web searches, the difference between primary and secondary sources, source credibility, and how to access articles through the university’s databases. Students used the skills gained in the library training sessions for later writing assignments including a formal lab report and annotated bibliography. By focusing on improving information literacy skills as well as providing practice in scientific writing, Biological Literature students are better able to meet the rigors of upper-division biology courses and communicate research findings in a more professional manner

Death at First Sight: The Duality of Love in Thibaut de Champagne and Ibn Quzman

This study compares between the secular love poetry of thirteenth-century trouvère Thibaut de Champagne and twelfth-century Andalusian author Ibn Quzman. Both poets portray passion as binary, since it incites both joy and pain. Their individual meditations on the duality of love focus especially on visual contemplation of beauty as the impetus to love. However, the effects of seeing beauty, like courtly love itself, are also binary. Both Thibaut de Champagne and Ibn Quzman attempt to deal with this optical paradox through the idealization of human passion: each poet sets up the beloved as an object of worship. In Thibaut, this appears as an ennobling, courtly love religion; while Ibn Quzman's visual considerations of beauty end up in sensual flesh worship. Without a way to settle the tension between joy and grief of profane love, the poet finally succumbs to passion in martyrdom; such a fate is seen in Thibaut and Ibn Quzman not only as inevitable, but also desirable

Toward Fostering A Sense Of Community Among Online Adjunct Faculty: Strategies Of Selected Higher Education Administrators

Higher education institutions are increasingly turning to adjunct faculty to teach online courses to accommodate online course enrollment growth. While many adjunct faculty are attracted to the flexibility of online teaching, they also face several challenges, such as feelings of isolation and disengagement, negative stereotypes, and lack of professional development opportunities. These challenges can be detrimental to their instructional performance and, therefore, the student learning experience. Thus, fully integrating online adjunct faculty into an institution’s community and creating an environment in which they feel supported is critical to the success of an institution’s online programs. Research suggests that higher education administrators are responsible for fostering a sense of community among online adjunct faculty, yet their approaches to fulfilling this responsibility remain largely unknown. Hence, the purpose of this study was to learn more about the strategies higher education administrators use to cultivate community among online adjunct faculty. Data were generated and analyzed using a constructivist grounded theory approach to understand the practices, influences, and challenges of 17 higher education administrators from different 4-year public and private institutions who reported fostering a sense of community among online adjunct faculty. Results indicated that the participants fostered a sense of community through intentional inclusion, operationalized by four interconnected processes: socialization, communication, participation, and recognition. Multiple contextual factors and challenges influenced participants’ community-building practices. The findings from this study provide a framework for creating inclusive working environments for online adjunct faculty and recommendations for further research to explore their nature and efficacy

Who's got game (theory)?

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, School of Architecture and Planning, Program in Media Arts and Sciences, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 85-88).Many players enjoy the challenge of outwitting computer opponents in strategy games. Devising strategies to defeat a computer opponent may enhance certain cognitive skills (e.g., analysis, evaluation, planning). This thesis takes a constructionist approach to gaming, hypothesizing that players may learn more about strategic planning by building their own computer opponents and then playing them to understand how their strategic theories play out in real experiments. I have developed a graphic toolkit for designing strategy games and computer opponents. The goal is to help students learn the underlying mathematical and computer science theories used to win these games. The tools have been designed to eliminate the overhead of using conventional programming languages to build games and focus students on the pedagogical issues of designing and understanding game theory algorithms. I describe the tools as well as initial evaluations of their effectiveness with populations of teenage students. Teenagers in this study posed their own problems, in the form of games they designed, and then hypothesized about winning strategies. Of their own volition, most teenagers iterated on their strategic designs, reformulated problems and hypotheses, isolated variables, and informed next generation versions of this tool with astute suggestions.(cont.) The toolkit designed for this thesis has a low floor, making it easy for people to quickly start playing with mathematical concepts, and a high ceiling for sophisticated exploration.by Erik Jackson Blankinship.Ph.D

Effects of interactive global changes on methane uptake in an annual grassland.

The future size of the terrestrial methane (CH4) sink of upland soils remains uncertain, along with potential feedbacks to global warming. Much of the uncertainty lies in our lack of knowledge about potential interactive effects of multiple simultaneous global environmental changes. Field CH4 fluxes and laboratory soil CH4 consumption were measured five times during 3 consecutive years in a California annual grassland exposed to 8 years of the full factorial combination of ambient and elevated levels of precipitation, temperature, atmospheric CO2 concentration, and N deposition. Across all sampling dates and treatments, increased precipitation caused a 61% reduction in field CH4 uptake. However, this reduction depended quantitatively on other global change factors. Higher precipitation reduced CH4 uptake when temperature or N deposition (but not both) increased, and under elevated CO2 but only late in the growing season. Warming alone also decreased CH4 uptake early in the growing season, which was partly explained by a decrease in laboratory soil CH4 consumption. Atmospheric CH4 models likely need to incorporate nonadditive interactions, seasonal interactions, and interactions between methanotrophy and methanogenesis. Despite the complexity of interactions we observed in this multifactor experiment, the outcome agrees with results from single‐factor experiments: an increased terrestrial CH4 sink appears less likely than a reduced one