Artificial reef monitoring in Florida coastal counties

This bulletin describes artificial reef monitoring programs in Florida. At least half the nation’s human-made marine reefs are estimated to be in Florida waters and high interest exists statewide among fishing, diving, governmental, economic and other stakeholders in the performance of these structures and the habitats that they create. Further, the level and breadth of activity in Florida makes it a bellwether, nationally and worldwide, for interests concerned with aquatic science, ecosystem management and environmental technology for habitat restoration or creation. Recent developments in Florida have prompted increased interest and effort in “monitoring” of reefs. These include extensive studies and disseminating results by the academic research community and the advent of governmental funding for monitoring projects in Florida counties. In response, this study was undertaken to gauge this growing field. Assessment of reef performance—including evaluation of how well they meet objectives for which they were created—has been a neglected subject in many areas of the world. More immediate issues of reef materials selection, siting and deployment usually take precedence in the short-term. A principal readership for this paper is the network of county-level organizations and individuals whose largely independent efforts, taken as a composite, make up much of the Florida reef “program.” Information presented here describes the extent and nature of reef monitoring in Florida counties, how data are managed and aspects of communication about reefs. (16pp.

Higgs Bundles and Holomorphic Forms

A new class of Higgs bundles is introduced in a natural setting. Existence and nonexistence results for Higgs-Hermitian-Yang-Mills metrics are proved.Comment: 21 pages These files are also located at : ftp://ftp.math.uiowa.edu/pub/seaman/preprints/HiggsBdlsHoloForms/ The current version contains an improvement of the main result and streamlined expositio

Is group therapy democratic? Enduring consequences of Outward Bound’s alignment with the Human Potential Movement

Franklin Vernon provided an example of how programs viewing themselves as “cultural islands” are in fact embedded within historical capitalist relations, through the discourses of self that they promote. In this response, I expand on Vernon’s argument to situate the quasi-therapeutic practices he identified in the history of the human potential movement, which effectively merged with Outward Bound starting in the 1960s and continues to define outdoor experiential education. Where Vernon sought the structural referents to different models of self, this response seeks their historical origins. The response concludes by linking Vernon’s argument with existing critiques and parallel efforts in the literature on youth development and identity formation

The Supply Constraint Problem in Economic Impact Analysis: An Arts/Sports Disparity

The most fundamental analytical errors that lead to overstated projected regional economic impacts (ex ante) are demand based: (1) failure to subtract local sources of spending and nonlocal uses of spending from the budgets of subject organizations or events; (2) erroneous attribution of all ancillary spending as causally related to the existence of the subject organization or event; and (3) failure to adapt multipliers to specific regions, including the failure to recognize the relationship between the likely size of the initial net spending injections and the speed with which those injections "leak" from the target region. But those ex post verification studies in sports that have generally found very small realized economic impacts resulting from even mega-events like Super Bowls have tended to emphasize supply-side infrastructure capacity constraints in local economies that generate significant crowding-out effects. This issue is reviewed with a focus on the differential treatment of crowding-out effects in the sports versus the arts (cultural sector) literatures, and evaluates whether there are legitimate reasons why ex ante arts economic impact studies have generally ignored supply constraints. Interestingly, the only real ex post verification study done in the arts (Skinner, 2006) found remarkable similarity between the empirical impact results and what would likely have been predicted by an ex ante impact study (for the case of blockbuster museum exhibits in Jackson, Mississippi), in contrast to the usual sports event finding. Working Paper 07-0

The Peahen’s Tale, or Dressing Our Parts at Work

However, there may ultimately be no logical way to reconcile decisions that prohibit employers from requiring women to wear revealing outfits and others that permit employers to require them to wear makeup,20 or decisions that prohibit penalizing a woman for being insufficiently feminine and others that permit penalizing a man for being insufficiently masculine.21 In addition, the increasing judicial acceptance of the sex stereotyping theory of sex discrimination under Title VII is in substantial tension with recent cases that insist that sex-differentiated dress and grooming requirements that merely 22 conform to existing social gender norms do not amount to impermissible sex discrimination. Because dress is so crucial a characteristic in sexually dimorphic species, and because it is so closely tied to sexual attractiveness, choice, and power dynamics, employers should be prohibited from requiring women to dress in gender normative ways that reflect those traits even if they believe that such dress codes do not amount to intentional sex stereotyping.223 Where, as here, so many threads come together to demonstrate that sex differences in dress are likely to affect the way that individuals are treated by others, employers should not be permitted to mandate differences that implicate notions of attractiveness or power

Communicating environmental sustainability within New Zealand news media and Wellington educational institutions A 60-credit Journalism Project presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Journalism at Massey University

As a country, New Zealand produces only about 0.17 percent of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions. Yet, per person, New Zealand is the fourth-highest emissions contributor globally (Sims, 2015). With the growing need to change lifestyle habits in order to lower emissions and reduce future costs involved with adapting to climate change impacts, it seems essential the public be well-informed and resourced in order to face the future. In order to meet the New Zealand Government’s environmentally-driven goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 30 per cent below the 2005 levels by 2030, the overall population needs to practise environmentally sustainable lifestyles around the country. This research aimed to explore how environmental sustainability is communicated by key influencers in New Zealand, educational institutions and news media. This is illustrated through a long-form journalism article on how educational institutions in Wellington are helping young people develop environmentally sustainable life-practices crucial to their future resilience and survival. This study is informed by interviews to help understand how a select number of educational institutions of various levels integrate environmental sustainability in their classroom; how this topic is communicated to students; and how New Zealand government agencies and local authorities support such efforts in educational institutions. Through interviews with New Zealand environment reporters and a critical analysis of environment reporting, this research discusses the power the media has in terms of climate change action and how journalists in New Zealand have coped with the challenge of covering environment in the context of a restructuring news industry. Without a strong presence of information-sharing through the education system and news media, New Zealand may not be ready to face the impacts of climate change

Adopting a Grounded Theory Approach to Cultural-Historical Research: Conflicting Methodologies or Complementary Methods?

Grounded theory has long been regarded as a valuable way to conduct social and educational research. However, recent constructivist and postmodern insights are challenging long-standing assumptions, most notably by suggesting that grounded theory can be flexibly integrated with existing theories. This move hinges on repositioning grounded theory from a methodology with positivist underpinnings to an approach that can be used within different theoretical frameworks. In this article the author reviews this recent transformation of grounded theory, engages in the project of repositioning it as an approach by using cultural historical activity theory as a test case, and outlines several practical methods implied by the joint use of grounded theory as an approach and activity theory as a methodology. One implication is the adoption of a dialectic, as opposed to a constructivist or objectivist, stance toward grounded theory inquiry, a stance that helps move past the problem of emergence versus forcing