Habitat use by \u3cem\u3eMyotis yumanensis\u3c/em\u3e and \u3cem\u3eTadarida brasiliensis mexicana\u3c/em\u3e in South San Francisco Bay wetlands: An Acoustic Study

Research on bat habitat use within coastal estuaries is limited. The purposes of my study were to determine whether Yuma myotis (Myotis yumanensis) and Mexican free-tailed bats (Tadarida brasiliensis mexicana) differentiate between open water and marsh within saline and brackish habitats and to examine whether climatic factors are correlated with general activity and tidal height with foraging of the two species. I recorded echolocation sequences over 30 survey nights in Alviso, California. Two Anabat II® detectors were randomly deployed each survey night in open salt water and salt marsh or open brackish water and brackish marsh. I identified M. yumanensis and T. b. mexicana sequences within each of the four habitats and feeding buzzes in open brackish water and brackish marsh. Additionally, I logged air temperature and wind speed per hour, percent moonlight visibility per survey night, and tidal height at 15-min intervals. I recorded 1,896 sequences, 845 from M. yumanensis and 983 from T. b. mexicana. For both species, there was a significant difference in frequency of occurrence and mean number of echolocation sequences per survey night in open water versus marsh for saline but not for brackish habitats. Furthermore, T. b. mexicana demonstrated greater preference than M. yumanensis for open salt water. Although the call frequency of T. b. mexicana increased with higher air temperature and lower moonlight visibility, the presence/absence of echolocation calls from the two species could not be predicted from the three climatic variables. Mean tidal height did not differ between M. yumanensis and T. b. mexicana sequences with feeding buzzes and sequences without buzzes in open brackish water and brackish marsh. The results increase our knowledge about bat habitat use in estuaries and provide important information to enhance bat conservation in coastal wetlands

Honoring Knowledge and Experience: Highlighting Caregiver Voices in a Professional Development Curriculum

Infant/toddler caregivers are often portrayed as undereducated and unprofessional. The same is true for family child caregivers. In this piece, the author describes an approach that takes a different point of view – assuming competence and knowledge - and building on the existing experiences of the people working with infants, toddlers and their families. The philosophy behind the professional development experience is delineated. The voices of the caregivers, instructors, and coaches who participated in this program are highlighted

Alien Registration- Brickley, Josephine (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/24607/thumbnail.jp

On Beauty and the Politics of Academic Institutionality

Zadie Smith’s 2005 novel, On Beauty, is a work that remains timely as it explores aesthetics in the context of the neoliberal American university. Art and beauty, removed from the hermetic sites of philosophy and official knowledge, become expansive categories in Smith’s text, spilling over into the social world to mark the intimate, everyday, embodied, and sensate experiences of a multicultural cast of characters orbiting the institution and navigating its politics. Tracking the various ways On Beauty’s minoritized characters are forced to negotiate the spaces in and around the university, this article highlights how those routinely excluded from the sites of institutional power deploy aesthetic strategies as resistance. This “intersectional aesthetics” prompts a reconsideration of the foundations of an aesthetic judgment rooted in Enlightenment notions of disinterest and universality, which ultimately prove to be thinly veiled racist and patriarchal requirements for subjectivity and citizenship. Finally, such tactics serve as the means by which On Beauty’s critique becomes not an indictment of the contemporary university, but a glimpse at its potential for fostering new ways of engaging beauty that embrace difference and spark vital, often unpredictable attachments

Evaluating the use of remote sensing data in the U.S. Agency for International Development Famine Early Warning Systems Network

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)'s Famine Early Warning System Network (FEWS NET) provides monitoring and early warning support to decision makers responsible for responding to food insecurity emergencies on three continents. FEWS NET uses satellite remote sensing and ground observations of rainfall and vegetation in order to provide information on drought, floods, and other extreme weather events to decision makers. Previous research has presented results from a professional review questionnaire with FEWS NET expert end-users whose focus was to elicit Earth observation requirements. The review provided FEWS NET operational requirements and assessed the usefulness of additional remote sensing data. We analyzed 1342 food security update reports from FEWS NET. The reports consider the biophysical, socioeconomic, and contextual influences on the food security in 17 countries in Africa from 2000 to 2009. The objective was to evaluate the use of remote sensing information in comparison with other important factors in the evaluation of food security crises. The results show that all 17 countries use rainfall information, agricultural production statistics, food prices, and food access parameters in their analysis of food security problems. The reports display large-scale patterns that are strongly related to history of the FEWS NET program in each country. We found that rainfall data were used 84% of the time, remote sensing of vegetation 28% of the time, and gridded crop models 10% of the time, reflecting the length of use of each product in the regions. More investment is needed in training personnel on remote sensing products to improve use of data products throughout the FEWS NET system. (C) 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers (SPIE). [DOI: 10.1117/1.JRS.6.063511