Gendered Wilderness: Gendered Language in Wilderness Discourse

A theory of social nature has proliferated and is becoming widely accepted among social researchers, especially within critical geography. This states that our encounters with the non- human world are always mediated. Whether we engage the outdoors using the park system, television, outdoor outfitters, or political organizations, the rhetoric of race, gender, economics, and politics are always at work on how we interact with landscapes. Three goals for this research include: 1) To outline the discursive constructions of wilderness and gender in connection with the social, and political work they do modern society 2) To outline the lived gender experience among wilderness advocates, highlighting moments when this experience resonates with the dominant discourse as well as moments of dissonance. 3) To use the subsequent categories of experience to arrive at a theories of dominant and subversive wilderness discourse

dARTMAP: A Neural Network for Fast Distributed Supervised Learning

Distributed coding at the hidden layer of a multi-layer perceptron (MLP) endows the network with memory compression and noise tolerance capabilities. However, an MLP typically requires slow off-line learning to avoid catastrophic forgetting in an open input environment. An adaptive resonance theory (ART) model is designed to guarantee stable memories even with fast on-line learning. However, ART stability typically requires winner-take-all coding, which may cause category proliferation in a noisy input environment. Distributed ARTMAP (dARTMAP) seeks to combine the computational advantages of MLP and ART systems in a real-time neural network for supervised learning, An implementation algorithm here describes one class of dARTMAP networks. This system incorporates elements of the unsupervised dART model as well as new features, including a content-addressable memory (CAM) rule for improved contrast control at the coding field. A dARTMAP system reduces to fuzzy ARTMAP when coding is winner-take-all. Simulations show that dARTMAP retains fuzzy ARTMAP accuracy while significantly improving memory compression.National Science Foundation (IRI-94-01659); Office of Naval Research (N00014-95-1-0409, N00014-95-0657

A Solution Hidden in Plain Sight: Closing the Justice Gap by Applying to Legal Aid the Market Incentives That Propelled the Pro Bono Revolution

The legal profession is now thirty years into the pro bono revolution, and the bar is more committed, in both word and action, to access to civil justice than at any other time in its history. Yet for most of the sixty million Americans who cannot afford a lawyer, the bar’s commitment provides little solace. Despite all the resources the bar has put into pro bono over the past thirty years, those living at or near poverty still do not receive legal help for almost eighty-six percent of their legal needs. In fact, lawyer participation in pro bono has become stagnant over the past decade, and the World Justice Project just ranked the United States 109th out of 128 countries in access to affordable civil justice. Meanwhile, law firm revenues rocket upward. In 2019, revenue at each of the nine largest law firms was greater than the combined operating budgets of the country’s 700 legal aid organizations. Revenue at one firm alone doubled the combined budgets of all legal aid organizations. Yet, as the ABA advocates for additional public funding of legal aid, law firms themselves pitch in less than four one-hundredths of a percent of their revenue. A fair question is what is truly motivating the bar—is it a foundational commitment to closing the justice gap, as it professes, or protecting its own investment in pro bono for the benefit of its members. If the bar is serious about closing the justice gap, it must not simply capture and leverage its advances in pro bono, but it must also commit to increasing its support for legal aid—in action, not just words—as it has with pro bono. While history has shown that this shift will not happen simply by encouragement and aspirational appeals, there is a blueprint for accomplishing this: the market incentives that moved big firms to enthusiastically embrace pro bono over the past few decades provide a solution hidden in plain sight. This article explores those incentives, sets out a proposal for how to apply those incentives to increase legal aid funding, and calls on the bar to live up to its public commitment to equal justice

Canvassers tend to seek out supporters who are like themselves, and that's not good for political participation.

Petition canvassers play an important role as political recruiters by introducing citizens to political issues and seeking their support. But not much is known about how these canvassers decide whom to recruit or about their methods. Research by Clayton Nall, Benjamin Schneer, and Daniel Carpenter sets forth a model of political recruiting that changes depending on canvassers' experiences, is constrained ..

Training the next generation of surgeons in robotic surgery

Context: Robotic surgery has been used with rapidly increasing frequency within urology and across many other surgical specialties. A standardized curriculum for the training and credentialing of robotic surgeons has unfortunately trailed far behind the adoption of this surgical technology. Objective: To review the current available surgical skills training models, assessments, and curricula for the purpose of training resident, fellow, and practicing surgeons in an effort to promote surgical skill proficiency and mastery and to minimize the risk of patient harm. Evidence acquisition: We performed a thorough review of available literature through a PubMed database search in February 2015. Evidence synthesis: In this article, we compiled and scrutinized the available relevant literature regarding past and present robotic surgical training techniques and credentialing criteria. This review details the basic surgical skills (both technical and nontechnical) that are necessary for individuals and teams to be successful in the operative setting. We go on to discuss the role of current robotic surgical training techniques including dry lab and virtual simulators. Finally, we offer current validated training curricula, the Global Evaluative Assessment of Robotic Skills and Fundamentals of Robotic Surgery models, which have laid the groundwork for a future standardized model that could be applied on a national and international level and across several surgical subspecialties. The ultimate goal of the review is to provide a foundation from which a future standardized training and credentialing curriculum could be based. Conclusion: There is currently a great need for a standardized curriculum to be developed and employed for the use of training and credentialing future and current robotic surgeons