State Criminal Laws Could Be a Light in the Dark for the Hidden Victims of Forced Marriage

(Excerpt) “There’s something you need to know about me . . . I am dead,” said Fraidy Reiss, a survivor of an abusive forced marriage, as she stood alone on a stage, speaking to a crowd. “I know what you’re thinking, [I don’t] look particularly dead . . . you might want to tell that to my family [because] they declared me dead almost thirteen years ago.” Reiss, who founded the organization Unchained at Last to help forced marriage victims like herself, grew up in an ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn. Right after finishing high school, Reiss was asked to choose a husband from a small pool of suitors. Reiss described her then-self as a “clueless teenage virgin who had never before been allowed to talk to a boy.” She recalled her family “tapping their feet” waiting for her to choose a husband after giving her “a matter of hours over a period of weeks” to make the life-changing decision. Reiss recalled feeling afraid that, by the age of twenty, she would be the only one of her friends “damned to a lifetime of singlehood in a community where being single is considered very shameful.” Only a week after walking down the aisle to what she called her “execution,” Reiss cowered in fear as her husband punched his fist through a wall in a “blind rage.” He threatened to kill her a few days later. She was forbidden from using birth control and forced to have intercourse with him, resulting in the birth of her first child eleven months after their wedding. She had limited financial and legal rights and remained trapped in the marriage for twelve years. After finally escaping with her two children, Reiss was shunned by her family. Although Reiss expressed that she was “born and bred” in Brooklyn, she experienced abuse that “people assume doesn’t happen in America.” Indeed, widespread perceptions that forced marriage does not occur in the United States are seriously misguided and likely a result of researchers, policymakers, and the media ignoring the issue. In 2011, the Tahirih Justice Center (Tahirih) produced the only national prevalence statistics on forced marriage to date and identified as many as 3,000 cases of forced marriage. Notably, two out of three respondents to the study felt there were cases of forced marriage that were not being identified.” While the Tahirih survey focused on immigrant communities, forced marriage is not an abuse experienced exclusively by immigrants. In addition to ultra-Orthodox Jewish communities, forced marriage escape stories have come out of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS) and other U.S. religious organizations

Continuing Analysis of Phytoplankton Nutrient Limitation in Farmington Bay and the Great Salt Lake

Farmington Bay is a nutrient-enriched, highly eutrophic embayment of the Great Salt Lake. The highly variable salinity of the bay influences what species of plankton can survive there. Previous analyses suggested that cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) may not be able to survive or fix atmospheric nitrogen at high salinities, thus maintaining the lake in a nitrogen-limited state. To determine the interacting influence of nutrients and salinity on the growth and nitrogen fixation of plankton we performed a 28-day bioassay with water from Farmington and Gilbert Bays in October 2004. We tested the response of the plankton to additions of nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) at salinities of 3%, 5%, 70/0, 9% or 11 %. Algal inocula from a variety of salinities were added to provide colonists for the cultures

High Daily and Year-Round Variability in Denitrification and Nitrogen Fixation in a Northern Temperate River

Rates of nitrogen (N) cycling processes like denitrification and dinitrogen (N2) fixation, which together are the primary contributors to N2 flux rates from surface waters, may change at different time scales from seasons to weeks to days. Yet, we know little about the magnitude, mechanisms or drivers of these temporal changes, especially at shorter daily and weekly timescales. Quantifying variation in rates and drivers across temporal scales is essential to understand how nutrient cycling processes operate in aquatic ecosystems and predict how they may respond to shifting seasonal dynamics caused by global change (i.e., earlier snowmelt and extreme weather events). This study quantified denitrification and N2 fixation rates seasonally and daily in a northern temperate river, and explored how environmental conditions such as discharge, light, and N and phosphorus (P) concentrations were related to that variation at different time scales. We measured denitrification and N2 fixation rates on biweekly and daily intervals at a single 20-m long sampling reach in the Pilgrim River in Michigan\u27s Upper Peninsula from May 2017 through May 2019. We found high rates of daily change (difference in rate from one day to the next) for both processes in all seasons (maximum daily change 5,690 μg N/m2/h for denitrification and 38 μg N/m2/h for N2 fixation). No detectable differences in rates among seasons were detected using Multiple Response Permutation Procedure (MRPP). Day-to-day variation did not change before and after elevated discharge events, including a 1,000-year flood that occurred in June 2018. Partial least squares (PLS) regression identified total dissolved N, dissolved organic N, and ammonium as important predictors of denitrification and N2 fixation, but explained only 15–28% of the variation in all measured rates. The unexpectedly high daily variation and lack of seasonal difference in rates found in this study demonstrate the need to use caution when studying these processes and/or extrapolating rates across time scales, as discrete and infrequent measurements may be misleading

Analysis of Phytoplankton Nutrient Limitation in Farmington Bay and the Great Salt Lake

The Great Salt Lake is bordered to the south and east by a growing metropolitan area that contributes high nutrients to Farmington Bay. This large bay is eutrophic, and there is concern that continued increases in effluents from the Salt Lake City area could extend to impact the much larger, and currently less productive, Gilbert Bay. This study focused on determining how nutrient supplies might limit, and therefore control, algal populations in Farmington Bay and Gilbert Bay at different salinities. We tested both short and long-term responses of algal growth using laboratory nutrient addition bioassays in the summer and fall of 2003. Because some phytoplankton can alleviate nitrogen deficiency by fixing atmospheric nitrogen, we also determined how nutrients and salinity influenced nitrogen fixation

Hydrogen Sulfide in Farmington Bay and the Great Salt Lake: A Potential Odor-Causing Agent

Odors from Farmington Bay and/or the Great Salt Lake frequently impact residents of Salt Lake and Davis counties, but the agent causing the problem and the origin of the odor is uncertain. Hydrogen sulfide (H2S) gas is produced in the deeper layers of water in Farmington Bay and Gilbert Bay in the Great Salt Lake, but these deeper waters are generally part of high salinity deep-brine layers that are resistant to wind mixing. Hydrogen sulfide has a rotten-egg odor and is a likely component contributing to the lake stink. The goals of this study were to determine (1) whether wind driven mixing events drove mixing of the deep-brine layers in Farmington and Gilbert Bays, (2) determine the amount of hydrogen sulfide present in each of these bays, and (3) determine the potential of each area of the lake to release hydrogen sulfide from those deep-brine layers and cause odor events. We found that in Farmington Bay, which was \u3c1.5 m (5 ft) deep during the study, the deep-brine layer was entrained (mixed) four times in three months during high-wind events. By contrast, in Gilbert Bay, which has a deeper water column and more stable deep-brine layer, the brine layer was never completely entrained. However, the top 0.9 m (3 ft) of the deep brine layer eroded between July and October. Hydrogen sulfide concentrations in the surface mixed layers of both bays were insignificant on each sampling date, but concentrations in the deep-brine layers were significant. In Farmington Bay H2S concentrations reached 8 mg/L in the deep-brine layer. In Gilbert Bay H2S concentrations in the deep-brine layer ranged from 11 mg/L in late July to 4 mg/L in November 2003. The higher concentrations in Gilbert Bay are likely due to decreased mixing and therefore increased time intervals of hydrogen sulfide accumulation in Gilbert Bay. Both bays may release H2S into the airshed, and thus contribute to odor problems. Large releases of H2S into the water columns could result in rapid deoxygenation and toxicity to aquatic organisms. Detailed whole water column monitoring of oxygen, salinity, and H2S concentrations in both bays should be undertaken to assess these potential threats. It will necessary to do these studies at a variety of lake levels in order to fully understand the driving mechanisms creating H2S and allowing it to be released from the lake

Ecological Analysis of Nutrient, Plankton and Benthic Communities in Farmington Bay and the Great Salt Lake, Utah (2004)

In Fall 2004, the Aquatic Ecology Practicum class at Utah State University finished a third year of research on limnological and ecological characteristics of Farmington Bay and Gilbert Bays of the Great Salt Lake. Our previous research has produced interesting findings in Farmington Bay, including hypereutrophy (Marcarelli et a!. 2001), high phosphorus loading into the Bay, overnight water column anoxia linked to high winds (Wurtsbaugh et a!. 2002), potential predator control of brine shrimp, and high levels of hydrogen sulfide in the sediment and deep brine layer (Marcarelli et a!. 2003). These class findings have lead to increased interest in Farmington and Gilbert Bays. Because of the breadth of research now occurring in Farmington Bay, the topics studied by the students this fall encompassed a wider range of research than ever before. The reports ranged from an expanded analysis of nutrients entering Great Salt Lake, including external loading and biological nitrogen fixation, benthic ecology of Gilbert Bay including analyses of stromatolites and brine shrimp cysts in sediments, and more focused experiments on brine shrimp survival and predation by corixids in Farmington Bay. Key findings of the students are identified below

The Ahpsort II To Evaluate The High Level Instruction Performances

This paper aims to propose a model for ranking Italian high schools based on the several performance outputs. In order to analyze the performance of Italian public High Schools we consider the students’ school performance and their academic achievements; also the school characteristics may influence the performance evaluation of high schools, although the importance of these aspects is certainly less than the results achieved by students.Data are from Eduscopio and ScuolaInChiaro portals and refers to the 2019/20 school year. We analyze a sample of 263 high schools (HS) in all Italian Regions. For each school we consider nine outputs related to students' school and academic performance, and school characteristics. We assess the performance of high schools using a multi-criteria approach. Our analysis involves a high number of schools, so we apply the AHPSort II method which in addition to defining the ranking of schools also defines their classification. Our results show that scientific lyceums are all in the first class regardless the geographic area

Displaced Signals of Hidden Vectors at the Electron-Ion Collider

The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) provides unique opportunities in searching for new physics through its high center of mass energy and coherent interactions of large nuclei. We examine how light weakly interacting vector bosons from a variety of models can be discovered or constrained, over significant parts of their parameter space, through clean displaced vertex signals at the EIC. Our results indicate that the searches we propose favorably compare with or surpass existing experimental projections for the models examined. The reach for the new physics that we consider can be markedly improved if "far backward" particle identification capabilities are included in the EIC detector complex.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figures. v2: updated to published versio

Mass-induced confinement near the sill of the conformal window

We revisit standard arguments for hyperscaling of the spectrum when a non-zero fermion mass is introduced to a gauge-fermion theory which is conformal in the infrared limit. With some general assumptions, we argue that the induced confinement scale will be significantly enhanced near the edge of the conformal to confining transition. This enhancement can allow for the fermion mass to be arbitrarily small compared to the confinement scale. This scale separation may allow for apparent spontaneous breaking of chiral symmetry within the conformal window, which may be of interest for construction of dilaton effective field theories in this regime.Comment: 23 pages, 4 figure

Multiscale collection and analysis of submerged aquatic vegetation spectral profiles for Eurasian watermilfoil detection

The ability to differentiate a non-native aquatic plant, Myriophyllum spicatum (Eurasian watermilfoil or EWM), from other submerged aquatic vegetation (SAV) using spectral data collected at multiple scales was investigated as a precursor to mapping of EWM. Spectral data were collected using spectroradiometers for SAV taken out of the water, from the side of a boat directly over areas of SAV and from a lightweight portable radiometer system flown from an unmanned aerial system (UAS). EWM was spectrally different from other SAV when using 651 spectral bands collected in ultraviolet to near-infrared range of 350 to 1000 nm but does not provide a practical system for EWM mapping because this exceeds the capabilities of available airborne hyperspectral imaging systems. Using only six spectral bands corresponding to an available multispectral camera or eight wetlands-centric bands did not reliably differentiate EWM from other SAV and assemblages. However, a modified version of the normalized difference vegetation index (mNDVI), using a ratio of red-edge to red light, was significantly different among dominant vegetation groups. Also, averaging the full range of spectral to 65 10-nm wide bands, similar to available hyperspectral imaging systems, provided the ability to identify EWM separately from other SAV. The UAS-collected spectral data had the lowest remote sensing reflectance versus the out-of-water and boatside data, emphasizing the need to collect optimized data. The spectral data collected for this study support that with relatively clear and calm water, hyperspectral data, and mNDVI, it is likely that UAS-based imaging can help with mapping and monitoring of EWM