A review of rodent control programs in New York State

The history of rodent control programs in New York State is reviewed, beginning with state-funded efforts in August 1967. In 1969, Federal rodent control grant funds were used to establish four Model Cities programs. At its peak in 1970, programs were active in 18 counties, eight cities and villages, and in six Model Cities areas. The program encompasses all the major metropolitan areas of the state, serving some nine million persons. As part of the state program, the Rodent Control Evaluation laboratory was established to investigate chemosterilants as a means of rodent control and to develop knowledge of pest rodent biology. Since then, the investigations program has turned to the problem of rodent resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides both in New York and other states in the eastern United States. Initial rat infestations, which ran 24.4 percent statewide in 1969, have been decreased 84 percent by late 1973. Similarly, in the same time period, unapproved refuse storage deficiencies were decreased 55.6 percent and exposed garbage conditions declined 44.7 percent. Rat bites showed a 40 percent decrease during these same years. By all measures, then, the program has been a success. Most programs have relied heavily upon anticoagulant rodenticides in the chemical control or rodent populations. Zinc phosphide, red squill, and norbormide are also used. Harborage removal and environmental improvement are stressed through active cleanups and educational efforts. During the four-year period 1969-1972, some 177,000 tons of rat harborage were removed from 66,000 premises in the state

Global Trade Reforms and Income Distribution in Developing Countries

This paper examines the effects of trade and domestic agricultural policy reforms on the distribution of incomes in six developing countries: Brazil, China, India, Malawi, Mexico and South Africa. The aggregate results from a global trade model are fed into separate national models. The insights available from alternative model types are evaluated. The distributional impacts of reform are found to be complex and to vary between countries. Given that it is typically impossible to reform (or equally not reform) without hurting some households with lower incomes, the conclusion is that it makes sense to help these households with targeted policies.trade reform, liberalisation, agriculture, income distribution, poverty, general equilibrium, Financial Economics, International Relations/Trade,

METHODS OF SEWER RAT CONTROL

The control of rats in the urban environment involves more than merely dealing with the above-ground populations. The average urban sewage system provides a vast labyrinth of passages and nesting places for the Norway rat, Rattus norvegicus. Here, in a protected underground habitat the rodent population is free to reproduce and ultimately expand to the maximum number that the environment can support. Eventually, the population outgrows its environment. At this point population pressures force animals to move out of the system. Rat burrows begin appearing in front yards, under sidewalks and driveways, and in flower beds, and rats themselves are occasionally seen emerging from drains and swimming into toilets. The result may be a new colony of rats on the surface and almost certainly numerous complaints to the control agency. In short, the uncontrolled populations of rats in sewers constitute a reservoir which extends into all parts of a city and is capable of establishing new infestations on the surface

A REVIEW OF RODENT CONTROL PROGRAMS IN NEW YORK STATE

The history of rodent control programs in New York State is reviewed, beginning with state-funded efforts in August, 1967. In 1969, Federal rodent control grant funds were used to establish four Model Cities programs. At its peak in 1970, programs were active in 18 counties, eight cities and villages, and in six Model Cities areas. The program encompasses all the major metropolitan areas of the state, serving some nine million persons. As part of the state program, the Rodent Control Evaluation Laboratory was established to investigate chemosterilants as a means of rodent control and to develop knowledge of pest rodent biology. Since then, the investigations program has turned to the problem of rodent resistance to anticoagulant rodenticides both in New York and other states in the eastern United States. Initial rat infestations, which ran 24.4 percent statewide in 1969, have been decreased 84 percent by late 1973. Similarly, in the same time period, unapproved refuse storage deficiencies were decreased 55.6 percent and exposed garbage conditions declined 44.7 percent. Rat bites showed a 40 percent decrease during these same years. By all measures, then, the program has been a success. Most programs have relied heavily upon anticoagulant rodenticides in the chemical control or rodent populations. Zinc phosphide, red squill , and norbormide are also used. Harborage removal and environmental improvement are stressed through active cleanups and educational efforts. During the four-year period, 1969-1972, some 177,000 tons of rat harborage were removed from 66,000 premises in the state

The Promise of a Healthy California: Overcoming the Barriers for Men and Boys of Color

PolicyLink argues for a community approach to expanding opportunities for men and boys of color, acknowledging the importance of "place" to ultimate life outcomes. The report takes key conclusions from "Building Equalizing Schools" and expands on it with recommendations for developing public will and building a platform and infrastructure for action

Using pivots to explore heterogeneous collections: A case study in musicology

In order to provide a better e-research environment for musicologists, the musicSpace project has partnered with musicology’s leading data publishers, aggregated and enriched their data, and developed a richly featured exploratory search interface to access the combined dataset. There have been several significant challenges to developing this service, and intensive collaboration between musicologists (the domain experts) and computer scientists (who developed the enabling technologies) was required. One challenge was the actual aggregation of the data itself, as this was supplied adhering to a wide variety of different schemas and vocabularies. Although the domain experts expended much time and effort in analysing commonalities in the data, as data sources of increasing complexity were added earlier decisions regarding the design of the aggregated schema, particularly decisions made with reference to simpler data sources, were often revisited to take account of unanticipated metadata types. Additionally, in many domains a single source may be considered to be definitive for certain types of information. In musicology, this is essentially the case with the “works lists” of composers’ musical compositions given in Grove Music Online (http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/public/book/omo_gmo), and so for musicSpace, we have mapped all sources to the works lists from Grove for the purposes of exploration, specifically to exploit the accuracy of its metadata in respect to dates of publication, catalogue numbers, and so on. Therefore, rather than mapping all fields from Grove to a central model, it would be far quicker (in terms of development time) to create a system to “pull-in” data from other sources that are mapped directly to the Grove works lists

Integrating musicology's heterogeneous data sources for better exploration

Musicologists have to consult an extraordinarily heterogeneous body of primary and secondary sources during all stages of their research. Many of these sources are now available online, but the historical dispersal of material across libraries and archives has now been replaced by segregation of data and metadata into a plethora of online repositories. This segregation hinders the intelligent manipulation of metadata, and means that extracting large tranches of basic factual information or running multi-part search queries is still enormously and needlessly time consuming. To counter this barrier to research, the “musicSpace” project is experimenting with integrating access to many of musicology’s leading data sources via a modern faceted browsing interface that utilises Semantic Web and Web2.0 technologies such as RDF and AJAX. This will make previously intractable search queries tractable, enable musicologists to use their time more efficiently, and aid the discovery of potentially significant information that users did not think to look for. This paper outlines our work to date

musicSpace: integrating musicology's heterogeneous data sources

A significant barrier to the research endeavours of musicologists (and humanities scholars more generally) is the sheer amount of potentially relevant information that has accumulated over centuries. Whereas researchers once faced the daunting prospect of physically scouring through endless primary and secondary sources in order to answer the basic whats, wheres and whens of history, these sources and the data they contain are now increasingly available online. Yet the vast increase in the online availability of data, the heterogeneity of this data, the plethora of data providers, and, moreover, the inability of current search tools to manipulate metadata in useful and intelligent ways, means that extracting large tranches of basic factual information or running multi-part search queries is still enormously and needlessly time consuming. Accordingly, the musicSpace project is exploiting Semantic Web technologies (Berners-Lee et al., 2001) to develop a search interface that integrates access to musicology’s largest and most significant online resources. This will make previously intractable search queries tractable, thus allowing our users to spend their research time more efficiently and ultimately aiding the attainment of new knowledge. This brief paper gives an overview of our work

Orchestrating musical (meta)data to better address the real-world search queries of musicologists

The dispersal of musicology’s diverse array of primary and secondary sources across countless libraries and archives was once an enormous obstacle to conducting research, but this has largely been overcome by the digitisation and online publication of resources in recent years. Yet, while the research process has undoubtedly been revolutionised, the current situation is far from perfect, as the digitisation of resources has often been accompanied by their segregation—according to media type, date of publication, subject, language, copyright holder, etc.—into a myriad of discrete online repositories, often with little thought having been given to interoperability. Given that musicological research typically cuts across such artificial divisions, this segregation of data means that accessing basic factual information or running multi-part search queries remains endlessly complicated, needlessly time consuming, and sometimes impossible. This barrier to tractability is only exacerbated by the limited capabilities of currently deployed search interfaces. There is one seemingly obvious solution to this query dilemma: enable integrated real-time querying over all the available metadata from as many sources as possible, and allow users to use that metadata to guide their queries. This solution implies that all data that could feasibly be construed as useful, but which is buried in the records, is extracted in some way, and that there is an interaction approach that enables metadata to be explored effectively and allows for the formulation of rich compound queries. The musicSpace project has taken a dual approach towards realising this solution. At the back-end we are developing services to integrate and, where necessary, surface (meta)data from many of musicology’s most important online resources, including the British Library Music Collections catalogue, the British Library Sound Archive catalogue, Cecilia, Copac, Grove Music Online, Naxos Music Library, Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), and Répertoire International des Sources Musicale (RISM) UK and Ireland. While at the front-end, in order to optimise the exploration of this integrated dataset, we are developing a modern web-based faceted browsing interface that utilises Semantic Web and Web2.0 technologies such as RDF and AJAX, and which is based on the existing ‘mSpace’ codebase. Our poster outlines the approach we have taken to importing, enriching and integrating the metadata provided by our data partners, and gives examples of the real-world musicological research questions that musicSpace has enabled

Discovery and exploration using musicSpace

Musicologists have to rely upon an extraordinarily heterogeneous body of primary and secondary research sources, even when conducting the most basic exploratory research. Although increasingly available online, data is nevertheless routinely catalogued or stored in numerous discrete databases according to media type (text, image, video, audio) and historical period (contemporary literature/sources, historical literature/sources), yet most musicological research cuts across these artificial divisions; researching Monteverdi’s madrigals, for example, could involve performing essentially the same search several times, because there are several relevant data sources (RISM, Grove, Naxos, RILM, BL Integrated Catalogue and BL Sound Archive). The musicSpace project seeks to integrate access to musicological data sources by providing a single search interface, thereby removing the need for search repetition and reducing inefficiency. The vast increase in on-hand data that comes with database integration both demands and allows for the development of far more sophisticated, intelligent and interactive user interfaces. Accordingly, musicSpace facilitates searching and encourages browsing by displaying search results and parameters using multiple panes, allowing instantaneous paradigmatic shifts in search focus, and employing a detailed subject ontology to enable the semi-automatic construction of complex searches. In this paper we present the musicSpace explorer interface and demonstrate its efficacy. We describe key technologies behind musicSpace to reflect on performance and scalability. In particular, however, we describe how we will be evaluating the system in use for research, and describe our longitudinal study to assess the impact of this integrated approach on artefact discovery and research query support