Big Country, Subtle Voices: Three Ethnic Poets from China's Southwest

In the southwest corner of China, the confluence of cultural diversity and national integration have produced a new kind of voice in the Chinese language: an ethnic voice. Speaking fluently in the Chinese nation’s language and culturally beyond its Han foundations, minority ethnic writers or shaoshu minzu in China are inciting a challenge to the traditional conceptions of Chineseness. In the PRC, the re-imagining of the boundaries between ethnicity, nation, and the globe is being produced in ethnic voices that resist the monopolizing narratives of the CCP and the Han cultural center. Furthermore, in the West where the antiquated conception of China as a monolithic Other is still often employed, the existence of these ethnic voices of difference demands a (re)cognition of its multifaceted and interwoven ethnic, political, and social composition. Three ethnic poets from the southwest are examined in this thesis: Woeser (Tibetan), He Xiaozhu (Miao), and Jimu Langge (Yi). They represent the trajectory of ethnic voice in China along the paradigms of local/ethnic vision, national culture, and global connections. By being both within and outside the Chinese nation and culture, they express a hybrid struggle that exists within the collision of ethnic minority cultures and the Han cultural center. Like the hybridity of postcolonial literature, this is a collision that cannot be reduced to it parts, yet also privileges the glocal impetus of ethnically centered vision. The poets’ voices speak the voice of difference within China, the Chinese language, and Chineseness throughout the world

A cosmic gamma-ray burst on May 14, 1975

A cosmic gamma-ray burst is reported that occurred at 29309.11 s UTC, May 14, 1975. The burst was detected at an atmospheric depth of 4 g/sq cm residual atmosphere with the University of California double scatter gamma-ray telescope launched on a balloon from Palestine, Texas at 1150 UTC, May 13, 1975. The burst was observed both in the single scatter mode by the top liquid scintillator tank in anti-coincidence with the surrounding plastic scintillator and in the double scatter mode from which energy and directional information are obtained. The burst is 24 standard deviations above the background for single scatter events. The total gamma-ray flux in the burst, incident on the atmosphere with photon energy greater than 0.5 MeV, is 0.59 + or - 0.15 photons/sq cm. The initial rise time to 90% of maximum is 0.015 + or - 0.005 s and the duration is 0.11 s. Time structure down to the 5 ms resolution of the telescope is seen. The mean flux over this time period is 5.0 + or - 1.3 photons/sq cm/s and the maximum flux is 8.5 + or - 2.1 photons/sq cm/s

Structural Conservation Practices in U.S. Corn Production: Evidence on Environmental Stewardship by Program Participants and Non-Participants

This study used the 2005 ERS CEAP-ARMS data for corn production to first compare key operator, field, farm, economic, and environmental characteristics of conservation program participants with non-participants, by farm-size class. We then estimate a cost-function based technology adoption model of producer decisions regarding the allocation of field-level acres between corn production and infield and perimeter-field conservation structures to examine how these conservation choices differ between program participants and non-participants, while accounting for differences in other field, farm, and environmental factors. Our null hypothesis is that the average conservation structural practice acres across U.S. corn acres supplied by growers participating in a conservation program are not different from non-participants. Infield conservation structures include terraces, grassed waterways, vegetative buffers, contour buffers, filter strips, and grade stabilization structures. Perimeter-field conservation structures include hedgerow plantings, stream-side forest and herbaceous buffers, windbreaks and herbaceous wind barriers, field borders, and critical area plantings. Because the dependent variable in this analysis is continuous, we use a Generalized Estimating Equations (GEE) procedure to estimate two models. The GEE estimation procedure (Liang and Zeger, 1986) accounts for correlation between adoption decisions measured as a continuous variable while maintaining the theoretical integrity of a multinomial discrete-choice model typically used in technology adoption studies. The cost-function models estimate field-level, producer acreage allocation decisions for corn, first, as a function of normalized production input costs (prices) and structural technology class and installation time-period attributes (Model 1), and second, as a function of Model 1 variables plus socio-environmental variables reflecting the potential influence of a variety of field, farm, and environmental characteristics (Model 2). Evidence indicates significant characteristic differences exist between conservation program participants and non-participants across U.S. corn production, that non-program factors do heavily influence producer conservation practice decisions, and that farm-size matters. In addition, results suggest that program non-participants tend to adopt infield conservation structures much more intensively while program participants emphasize the adoption of perimeter-field conservation structures. Finally, these results seem to suggest that because perimeter-field structural practices can involve differential productivity/cost effects and off-site benefits, program incentives may need to play a greater role in encouraging their adoption than they do for infield structural practices.Crop Production/Industries, Environmental Economics and Policy,

IT\u27S ABOUT MORE THAN JUST ANIMALS : ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS OF ZOO-ADJACENT CONSERVATION(ISTS) IN THE U.S.

This research explores the influences of diverse environmental politics in shaping zoo-adjacent conservation activities in the United States. Based upon 13 months of multi-sited ethnographic research, conducted with conservation actors across six states, the researcher investigates and documents how conservation professionals—operating in contexts adjacent to zoological institutions—experience and respond to the socio-environmental implications associated with the cascading effects of global environmental change. In the face of current challenges and uncertain environmental futures—shaped by habitat alterations, ecological transitions, and species declines/extinctions—conservationists are undergoing their own processes of reassessment and reconfiguration of their underpinning philosophies and body of practices that inform their relationships to the environment. The research lays out an argument about how in the face of socio-environmental change, conservation—and the ongoing reconfigurations of its identities, priorities, and practices—are being shaped by conservation organizations and individual conservation actors across scales of influence; from powerful organizations and their executives, to on-the-ground professionals doing the day-to-day work of conservation programs. This represents a contribution to understandings of how ‘Conservation’ comes into being, which, in the literature, is often treated as a monolithic entity and is absent of the contextualized realities of conservation organizations and the individuals who comprise them. Centering examinations of those contextualized realities that shape how conservation comes into being across scales, this research examines: how zoological institutions are increasingly foregrounding narratives about their identities as “conservation organizations”; how professionals are grappling with their shifting understandings of ‘nature’ and the role of conservation interventions therein; increasing interventionist approaches and related connections between on-the-ground professionals and species of concern; the impact of scientific knowledge politics on conservation activities; and the webs of social relations involved in enacting contemporary conservation actions. Ultimately, this research understands Conservation—a diverse body of philosophies and praxis—as an arena of human-environmental relation(s) that must be examined across scales of influence and through the contextualized realities of individual actors and organizations who comprise it. Moving beyond traditions of monolithic treatment, this project contributes to scholarly work involved in developing a more “multifaceted understanding” of conservation activities through attention to the experiences and “complex realities” of conservation professionals

Ethanol Plant Location Determinants and County Comparative Advantage

The location of ethanol plants is determined by infrastructure, product and input markets, fiscal attributes of local communities, and state and federal incentives. This empirical analysis uses probit regression along with spatial clustering methods to analyze investment activity of ethanol plants at the county level for the lower U.S. 48 states from 2000 to 2007. The availability of feedstock dominates the site selection decision. Other factors, such as access to navigable rivers or railroads, product markets, producer credit and excise tax exemptions, and methyl tertiary-butyl ether bans provided some counties with a comparative advantage in attracting ethanol plants.cluster analysis, comparative advantage, ethanol production, location model, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Environmental Economics and Policy, Political Economy, R1, R3,

Working-Land Conservation Structures: Evidence on Program and Non-Program Participants

In recent years, the Federal government has placed more emphasis on working-land conservation programs. Farmers can be reimbursed for adopting certain conservation practices, such as the installation of in-field or perimeter conservation structures, to enhance water quality and soil productivity. In an effort to better understand the relationships between operator motivations, program incentives, and the environmental benefits of conservation programs, a multi-agency survey, the Conservation Effects Assessment Project-Agricultural Resources Management Survey (CEAP-ARMS), was conducted in 2004 across 16 states representing more than one-million farmers growing wheat. The nationally representative survey integrates Natural Resources Inventory (NRI) data on field-level physical characteristics, program information, farm-level costs of production, and farm household information. This objective of this paper is twofold. First, using the CEAP-ARMS, farm structure, household, and operator characteristics of farmers participating in one or more conservation programs are compared with farmers not participating in a conservation program. Second, an impact model is specified to test whether program participants allocated more acres to in-field or perimeter conservation structures than nonparticipants, holding other factors constant. Evidence suggests that program participants allocate more field acres to vegetative conservation structures than nonparticipants with in-field or perimeter conservation structures.Environmental Economics and Policy,

Optimizing Acoustic Activation of Phase Change Contrast Agents With the Activation Pressure Matching Method: A Review

Sub-micron phase-change contrast agents consist of a liquid perfluo ocarbon core that can be vaporized by ultrasound (acoustic droplet vaporization) to generate contrast with excellent spatial and temporal control. When these agents, commonly referred to as nanodroplets, are formulated with cores of low boiling-point perfluo ocarbons such as decaflu orobutane and octafluo opropane, they can be activated with low-mechanical index imaging pulses for diagnostic applications. Since the utilization of minimum mechanical index is often desirable to avoid unnecessary biological effects, enabling consistent activation of these agents in an acoustic fiel is a challenge because the energy that must be delivered to achieve the vaporization threshold increases with depth due to attenuation. A novel vaporization approach called Activation Pressure Matching has been developed to deliver the same pressure throughout a fiel of view in order to produce uniform nanodroplet vaporization and to limit the amount of energy that is delivered. In this manuscript, we discuss the application of this method with a Versasonics V1 Research Ultrasound System to modulate the output pressure from an ATL L11–5 transducer. Vaporization-pulse spacing optimization can be used in addition to matching the activation pressure through depth, and we demonstrate the feasibility of this approach both in vivo and in vitro. The use of optimized vaporization parameters increases the amount of time a single bolus of nanodroplets can generate useful contrast and provides consistent image enhancement in vivo. Therefore, APM is a useful technique for those wishing to maximize the efficac of phase change contrast agent while minimizing delivered acoustic energy

Geographical Analysis of US Green Sector Industry Concentration

This paper analyzes the geographic distribution of “green energy” sector clustering in the lower 48 United States using recent developments in industry concentration analysis. Evidence suggests that the ten green energy subsectors and the aggregate of the firms comprising the green energy sector are regionally concentrated. Positive changes in industry concentration from 2002 to 2006 tended to be greatest in non-metropolitan counties, suggesting comparative advantage with respect to site location for the composite of firms making up these sectors.Agglomeration, Location Quotient, Renewable Energy, Community/Rural/Urban Development, Industrial Organization, Research and Development/Tech Change/Emerging Technologies,