The FY2006 Economic Impact of Continuing Operations of the University of Connecticut Health Center (Fourth Report)

This report provides the financial detail to re-enforce the activities of the UConn Health Center as a significant surce of new state tax revenue, with a economically viable and vital fiscal basis. In addition to its fiscal engagement within Hartford county, the UConn Health Center contributes significant public health services, and is the source of new medical research.UConn, medical college, fiscal review, "quality of life"

Rainfall, leafing phenology and sunrise time as potential Zeitgeber for the bimodal, dry season laying pattern of an African rain forest tit (Parus fasciiventer)

I gratefully acknowledge financial support received through the British Ornithologists’ Union Small research Grant scheme and from the African Bird Club.Recent studies have documented a mismatch between the phenology of leaf production, prey availability and the nestling food requirements of north temperate songbirds, attributed to climate change effects. Although tropical forest species have often been regarded as relatively a seasonal breeders, similar disruptive effects can be expected at equatorial latitudes, where comparatively little is known of the links between weather, leafing phenology, food availability and bird breeding activity, particularly in complex rain forest habitats. During a 19-yr study at 1°S in Bwindi Impenetrable Forest, Uganda, Stripe-breasted Tits Parus fasciiventer showed a strongly bimodal laying pattern, breeding mainly in the two dry seasons, with 50% of breeding activity occurring in January–February and 19% in June–July. Individual females bred in both dry seasons, laying their first and last clutches up to 28 weeks apart. Breeding activity was linked to leaf production, which peaked mainly in November–December, following the September–November wet season. Increased leaf production is likely to have stimulated a rise in caterpillar numbers during December–February, coinciding with peak food demands by nestling tits. Laying was thus positively correlated with increased leaf production in the preceding calendar month, but was also linked to day length and a change in sunset time. To investigate possible links between egg laying and photic cues I compared the median date of first clutches laid by marked females in each half of the breeding year (October–March and April–September), with annual changes in photoperiod (varying by 7 min p.a.) and sunrise time (varying bimodally, by 31 min p.a.). The two median laying dates fell 138–139 days after the last date on which sunrise had occurred at 07:05 in August and January, suggesting the potential for sunrise time to act as a cue, or Zeitgeber, for breeding in tropical birds. Further work is required to establish whether the relationship is causative or coincidental.Publisher PDFPublisher PDFPeer reviewe

Intertextual Episodes in Lectures: A Classification from the Perspective of Incidental Learning from Reading

In a parallel language environment it is important that teaching takes account of both the languages students are expected to work in.  Lectures in the mother tongue need to offer access to textbooks in English and encouragement to read. This paper describes a preliminary study for an investigation of the extent to which they actually do so. A corpus of lectures in English for mainly L1 English students (from BASE and MICASE)  was examined for the types of reference to reading which occur, classified by their potential usefulness for access and encouragement. Such references were called ‘intertextual episodes’. Seven preliminary categories of intertextual episode were identified.  In some disciplines the text is the topic of the lecture rather than a medium for information on the topic, and this category was not pursued further. In the remaining six the text was a medium for information about the text. Three of them involved management, of texts by the lecturer her/him self, of student writing, or of student reading. The remaining three involved reference to the content of the text either introducing to students, reporting its content, or, really the most interesting category, relativizing it and thus potentially encouraging critical reading. Straightforward reporting that certain content was in the text at a certain point was the most common type, followed by management of student reading. Relativization was relatively infrequent. The exercise has provided us with categories which can be used for an experimental phase where the effect of different types of reference can be tested, and for observation of the references actually used in L1 lectures in a parallel-language environment

CSI: Bethesda

Philip Shaw reviews Visible Proofs: Forensic Views of the Body, the current exhibition at the National Library of Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland

Introduction

No abstract

Factors affecting the breeding performance of the Antarctic blue-eyed shag (Phalacrocorax atriceps bransfieldensis)

Blue-eyed Shag nestlings at two colonies on Signy Island, South Orkney Islands, have been ringed annually since 1960. By 1979 27 % of the adult population had been ringed, and were of known-age. More males than females return to the colony and breed for the first time at ages 3-4 years, and most often obtain a mate of the same age, or of one year older than themselves. Age similarities within pairs persist in older age-groups, even amongst changed pairs. In most cases the new mate is one year older than the mate of the previous season. Pair stability between successive seasons is low, and does not affect, nor is effected by, breeding success. Five nest-site characteristics were found to have no effect on breeding performance. Older males obtain nest-sites which afford a high degree of social contact with their neighbours, usually in the centre and intermediate areas of the colony. Egg laying is more synchronous than in other shag species, and there is no relationship between female age and laying date. Late clutches are usually smaller and yield fewer fledged young than early and mid-season clutches. The number of chicks hatched and f3 edged increases up to the age of 5 years, and declined after 10-11 years of ago. Clutch size and nestling survival fluctuate markedly from season to season. In clutches of three, third eggs are smaller, yield lighter chicks and usually hatch within 2-4 days of their siblings. Hatching asynchrony (rather than egg-size differences) promotes chick weight differences, a.d the early death of third chicks. The daily food consumption of young 3-chick broods is 7-8 times less than that of older, reduced broods, and it is suggested that most adults selectively starve the third chick, causing its early death. Possible advantages of this behaviour are discussed

Alien Registration- Shaw, Philip E. (Portland, Cumberland County)

https://digitalmaine.com/alien_docs/22017/thumbnail.jp

Satirical Apocalypse: Endism and the 1990s Fictions of Will Self

(Will Self, ‘Ingenious Bubble Wrap’, 26) [T]he 1990s will come to be seen as the Gotterdammerung of periodicity itself. […] [N]ever again will the brute fact of what year it is matter so much in cultural terms. In ‘The Valley of the Corn Dollies’ in the Guardian in 1994, Will Self said of his homeland: ‘It is a culture of profound and productive oppositions. And I believe, personally, the best possible country for someone with a satirical bent to live in. I’d go further: England has the world’s top satirical culture’ (Junk Mail, 204) . Elsewhere in ‘Conversations: Martin Amis’, Self ‘unquestionably’ situates himself as part of that heritage (408) , working in literary satire, aware of his antecedents. Satire itself has a long tradition, traced back variously to Ancient Egypt and to Greece, to the Romans and to Medieval Europe, although arguably the role of satire as a mode..