Aquatic Invertebrates of the Devereux Slough - 2018

In 2018, the hardscape construction of NCOS (North Campus Open Space), a restored wetland on the Northern border of COPR (Coal Oil Point Reserve), was completed, thus approximately doubling the overall size of the wetland and offering the rather unique opportunity of being able to compare the two side-by-side.  Basic water quality and aquatic invertebrate monitoring of both sites were undertaken to better understand the dynamics of how a newly constructed wetland developed into an established wetland.The surprising result of this first year of monitoring is that COPR and NCOS were more or less equivalent in species richness and abundance, with the Shannon-Wiener Index giving a slight nod to NCOS for more diversity and Evenness in the data.Four taxa are the most significant contributors to the total taxa observed – Copepods, Ostracods, Cladocera, and Corixidae.  Additionally, we found Chironomids, Ceratopogonidae, Ephydridae, and Nematodes in significant abundance.Sampling protocols were evaluated indicating that sampling in algae gives more than an order-of-magnitude greater abundance and diversity than in sampling in open water and that the Filtered Beaker method gives more precise species density information than the Sweep-Net method; when sampling at shallower depths where the Sweep-Net is not fully submerged.Additionally, the effect on other aquatic invertebrates of the use of VectoBac for mosquito abatement was looked at – indicating a minimum, if any, affect

Public Child Welfare Professionals - Those Who Stay

Public child welfare workers-especially those working in the trenches -are the life blood of child protection. Yet, the ever present challenge is keeping committed and talented professionals in the field. This article is based on a 1990 study which examined the phenomena of staying in the field through the eyes of the professionals who have done so. The study investigated the life histories and work experiences of 18 selected child welfare workers in a mid-western state through data gathered from in-depth written and oral life histories. Findings provide insight into the world of the child welfare worker

Capital Accumulation through Private Finance

Capitalist economies are societies of production and distribution, in which financial systems determine the structure of resource creation. Capital accumulation is the structure through which wealth is distributed from this process through time. The paper examines the ways in which private financing defines, constructs and destabilizes this system. Chapter 1 describes the general process through which finance defines the composition of capital in the economy. Chapter 2 describes the recent history of financialization, in which the American economy has become increasingly subordinated to and destabilized by private finance through a complex web of institutional and operational aspects. The paper is a critical analysis of and commentary on capitalism, as mediated by finance

Why Females Fight: Predicting Political Activism among Palestinian Female Youth

A distinct focus on female youth experiences in political contests has been lacking in the literature on youth and political violence despite many female youth’s involvement with armed groups. The first Palestinian Intifada (1987-1993) saw the participation of many female youth alongside both teenage boys and men. This is notable especially given the patriarchal culture of Palestinian society in that women and young girls are traditionally confined to the private sphere. Additionally, public interactions with men and young boys could be viewed as improper and threats to one’s honor and purity may ensue. In light of these facts, the purpose of this study is to investigate the experience of Palestinian female adolescents in zones of political conflict - specifically in the Gaza Strip during the First Intifada. More specifically, this study explores the relationship between socioeconomic status, religious, political and individual characteristics on differences in levels of female participation and activist behaviors. Data were collected via self-report survey in the Gaza Strip in 1998 from a sample of 960 youth, 375 of which were female. Models predicting political involvement are assessed through hierarchical linear regression analyses. Results indicated that socioeconomic status, age, efficacy, religiosity, and political affiliation predicted Palestinian female youth activism in the first Intifada. No interaction was found between religiosity, political affiliation, and activism. These findings are discussed in relation to the broader literature on civic and political engagement of youth as well as gender issues in orthodox Islamic societies

The Role of Family in Wellbeing and Quality of Life among Palestinian Adults

The family domain has been inadequately included in general discussions of wellbeing and quality of life. The omission of family influences from these discussions is particularly unfortunate given that families are the primary institution in which individuals come to know themselves in relation to others and their environment. Adequate attention to family is all the more important when studying political conflict given the span of forces associated with political conflict that might tax families. This dissertation used data from a recent project designed to understand the nature of wellbeing/ quality of life among Palestinians, focusing particularly on the role of family. Interview data from 14 group interviews of 21-53 year old Palestinians conducted in 2010 were used (n=68; 5 individuals per group, minus two absentees; 33 males, 35 females). Analyses of the interview data were conducted using principles from a grounded theory approach. Findings revealed that although family was not described as the most important aspect of wellbeing, it featured prominently in conceptualizations of quality of life, both as affecting and being affected by wellbeing in other domains. From the women’s interviews, five themes of family life emerged. These values included connection among family members, the importance of autonomy and educational attainment for women and children, desires for the physical safety of one’s family, and the need for fathers to attain economic security. Similarly, the men also spoke of the importance of economic security to a man’s sense of self and issues of women’s autonomy. Some of the men also discussed the roles of respect and religious devotion. Though there were differences in the themes that emerged from the men’s and women’s interviews, both groups described how the political context creates barriers that prevent families from achieving wellbeing. The findings of this study point to the importance of including family relationships in discussions of wellbeing /quality or life, particularly for individuals who have experienced chronic political constraint such as Palestinians. One apparent value of such an endeavor is the discovery of how tightly family life is tied to other prevailing contexts in jointly determining quality of life

A Selected Index to Legal Periodicals, September, 1936 to June, 1937

A separately-paginated index to recently received law reviews and periodicals

Competitive Trace Theory: A Role for the Hippocampus in Contextual Interference during Retrieval.

Much controversy exists regarding the role of the hippocampus in retrieval. The two dominant and competing accounts have been the Standard Model of Systems Consolidation (SMSC) and Multiple Trace Theory (MTT), which specifically make opposing predictions as to the necessity of the hippocampus for retrieval of remote memories. Under SMSC, memories eventually become independent of the hippocampus as they become more reliant on cortical connectivity, and thus the hippocampus is not required for retrieval of remote memories, only recent ones. MTT on the other hand claims that the hippocampus is always required no matter the age of the memory. We argue that this dissociation may be too simplistic, and a continuum model may be better suited to address the role of the hippocampus in retrieval of remote memories. Such a model is presented here with the main function of the hippocampus during retrieval being "recontextualization," or the reconstruction of memory using overlapping traces. As memories get older, they are decontextualized due to competition among partially overlapping traces and become more semantic and reliant on neocortical storage. In this framework dubbed the Competitive Trace Theory (CTT), consolidation events that lead to the strengthening of memories enhance conceptual knowledge (semantic memory) at the expense of contextual details (episodic memory). As a result, remote memories are more likely to have a stronger semantic representation. At the same time, remote memories are also more likely to include illusory details. The CTT is a novel candidate model that may provide some resolution to the memory consolidation debate

The impact of experienced stress on aged spatial discrimination: Cortical overreliance as a result of hippocampal impairment

A large body of neuroscientific work indicates that exposure to experienced stress causes damage to both cortical and hippocampal cells and results in impairments to cognitive abilities associated with these structures. Similarly, work within the domain of cognitive aging demonstrates that elderly participants who report experiencing greater amounts of stress show reduced levels of cognitive functioning. The present article attempted to combine both findings by collecting data from elderly and young participants who completed a spatial discrimination paradigm developed by Reagh and colleagues [Reagh et al. (2013) Hippocampus 24:303-314] to measure hippocampal-mediated cognitive processes. In order to investigate the effect of stress on the cortex and, indirectly, the hippocampus, it paired the paradigm with electroencephalographic recordings of the theta frequency band, which is thought to reflect cortical/hippocampal interactions. Findings revealed that elderly participants with high levels of experienced stress performed significantly worse on target recognition and lure discrimination and demonstrated heightened levels of cortical theta synchronization compared with young and elderly low stress counterparts. Results therefore provided further evidence for the adverse effect of stress on cognitive aging and indicate that impaired behavioral performance among high stress elderly may coincide with an overreliance on cortical cognitive processing strategies as a result of early damage to the hippocampus