Whose Turf? Public Relations and Marketing in Social Media

Organizations have found Twitter and Facebook to be the most effective way to converse with audiences. Current positions now require new skills to understand, shape, and engage with social networks and online communities. This study examines how organizations structure the management of social media. As the field develops, it is crucial to understand the current trends. By surveying the perception of social media management, one can better understand how organizations will handle digital communication in the future. Professionals were categorized into six professional specialties: Public Relations Agency, Marketing Agency, Corporate Public Relations, Corporate Marketing, Non-Profit Public Relations, and Non-Profit Marketing. In the survey, participants were asked how social media is used in marketing and/or public relations. By bringing the co-orientation model of communication into the research analysis (a comparison of perceptions vs. actual usage to determine gap), the study compared responses from public relations and marketing professionals to represent their specialty. The results indicate there is a division of labor in social media usage for each profession. Public relations professionals utilize social media as a dialogic approach (two-way communication) and marketing professionals do less environmental monitoring and utilize primarily an asymmetrical approach (one-way communication)

Can Cities Be Feminist? A Cross-National Analysis of Factors Affecting Local Female Representation in Latin America

Women are underrepresented in mayor’s offices and on city councils across Latin America. In this paper, I examine gender-based differences in individual opinions toward running for office in Argentina and Uruguay, as well as conduct a twenty-six country analysis on factors related to female representation in municipal government. Based on these analyses, I make three main conclusions about female local representation in Latin America. The first conclusion is that women in Latin America are significantly less likely to want to run or feel qualified to run for office. The second conclusion is that cross-national variation in the percentage of female mayors is influenced by structural factors, specifically unmet need for family planning, and cultural factors, specifically voter attitudes surrounding women’s leadership abilities and left/right leanings of the electorate. The third conclusion is that cross-national variation in female city council members is strongly influenced by institutional forces that may generate an environment that is more amenable to running for local office.My overall conclusions are that closing the ambition gap between men and women through personal encouragement and women’s recruitment to political parties would improve the descriptive representation gap for mayors, and that prospective female city council members would benefit from local quota laws

Reweaving the tapestry: a supertree of birds

Supertrees are a useful method of constructing large-scale phylogenies by assembling numerous smaller phylogenies that have some, but not necessarily all, taxa in common. Birds are an obvious candidate for supertree construction as they are the most abundant land vertebrates on the planet and no comprehensive phylogeny of both extinct and extant species currently exists. In order to construct supertrees, primary analysis of characters is required. One such study, presented here, describes two new partial specimens belonging to the Primobucconidae from the Green River Formation of Wyoming (USA), which were assigned to the species Primobucco mcgrewi. Although incomplete, these specimens had preserved anatomical features not seen in other material. An attempt to further constrain their phylogenetic position was inconclusive, showing only that the Primobucconidae belong in a clade containing the extant Coraciiformes and related taxa. Over 700 such studies were used to construct a species-level supertree of Aves containing over 5000 taxa. The resulting tree shows the relationships between the main avian groups, with only a few novel clades, some of which can be explained by a lack of information regarding those taxa. The tree was constructed using a strict protocol which ensures robust, accurate and efficient data collection and processing; extending previous work by other authors. Before creating the species-level supertree the protocol was tested on the order Galliformes in order to determine the most efficient method of removing non-independent data. It was found that combining non-independent source trees via a “mini-supertree” analysis produced results more consistent with the input source data and, in addition, significantly reduced computational load. Another method for constructing large-scale trees is via a supermatrix, which is constructed from primary data collated into a single, large matrix. A molecular-only tree was constructed using both supertree and supermatrix methods, from the same data, again of the order Galliformes. Both methods performed equally as well in producing trees that fit the source data. The two methods could be considered complementary rather than conflicting as the supertree took a long time to construct but was very quick to calculate, but the supermatrix took longer to calculate, but was quicker to construct. Dependent upon the data at hand and the other factors involved, the choice of which method to use appears, from this small study, to be of little consequence. Finally an updated species-level supertree of the Dinosauria was also constructed and used to look at diversification rates in order to elucidate the “Cretaceous explosion of terrestrial life”. Results from this study show that this apparent burst in diversity at the end of the Cretaceous is a sampling artefact and in fact, dinosaurs show most of their major diversification shifts in the first third of their history

Five Minds Our Children Deserve: Why They’re Needed, How To Nurture Them

We describe the five minds that should be nurtured in all children to prepare them to become both good workers and good citizens of a complex, every-changing society. In light of the central role that digital media technologies play in such a society, we explore the way in which digital media affect the development and expression of the five minds, as well as the distinct challenges of cultivating each mind in a digital era. We then delineate the types of schools we believe are best suited to meet these challenges. In conclusion, we consider the pedagogical practices required to develop the five minds and the policies and practices that powerfully affect what happens within the classroom walls

STEM USU Libraries Orientation

An introduction to library resources and services available to students in STEM programs at Utah State University.https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/elearning_all/1057/thumbnail.jp

The James S. Rogers Collection: Examining the Past to Inform the Future

Exhibition program from a Spring 2018 exhibit presented in the Daniel R. Coquillette Rare Book Room at the Boston College Law Library. The exhibit featured books donated to the Rare Book Room by Professor James S. Rogers

Sequoia Pitch Moth in Pines

This fact sheet focuses on the sequoia pitch moth (SPM) (Sesiidae: Synanthedon sequoiae). It includes how to identify, life cycle, damage, and management