Chemosensory processing by the mediodorsal thalamus.

The mediodorsal thalamus (MD) is thought to be key component of the network that processes chemosensory information to guide our consummatory choices. Previous studies show that the mediodorsal thalamus receives projections from both the piriform cortex (PC) and gustatory cortex (GC), suggesting that it may process chemosensory information from both areas. Although the mediodorsal thalamus has been shown to respond to odors detected by sniffing, it remains unknown how its neurons represent experienced odors, tastes, and odor-taste mixtures originating from the mouth. Importantly, humans and animals with mediodorsal thalamic lesions do not suffer from anosmia, but experience deficits in odor attention, and the hedonic perceptions of odors and odor-taste mixtures. To gain a better understanding of the role of the mediodorsal thalamus in processing chemosensory information, my dissertation project focused on investigating its connectivity, physiology, and behavioral relevance in the context of consummatory choice. I used an intersectional viral approach and found that a greater proportion of neurons in the mediodorsal thalamus form cortico-thalamic connections with the gustatory cortex than with the posterior piriform cortex. This result suggests that input from the gustatory cortex may more broadly influence processing in the mediodorsal thalamus than the posterior piriform cortex. Next, I recorded responses of neurons in the mediodorsal thalamus to experienced odors, tastes, and odor-taste mixtures delivered into the mouth. I found that neurons in the mediodorsal thalamus encode the identity of individual odors, tastes, and odor-taste mixtures. Additionally, subpopulations of neurons represent taste palatability and represent odor-taste mixtures differently than their odor or taste component. These results are the first to show the mediodorsal thalamus encodes taste and odor-taste information. Finally, I used pharmacological inactivation during a two-bottle brief-access task to determine the role of the mediodorsal thalamus in the consummatory choice. I found that inactivation of the mediodorsal thalamus decreases overall consumption and increases the amount of switching between two stimuli, suggesting its importance in sensory attention and stimulus value during consummatory choice tasks. Taken together, these data indicate that the mediodorsal thalamus is important to the network that processes chemosensory signals and informs consummatory choice

Executive Order 14036: Promoting Competition?

Four million Americans left their jobs in July 2021. By the end of that month, the number of open jobs reached an all-time high: 10.9 million. Employees are walking out the door in record numbers as part of a trend so remarkable, we even gave it a name: the Great Resignation. With 4.3 million Americans quitting their jobs in January 2022 and 11.3 million job openings, the Great Resignation is only gaining momentum and showing no signs of slowing down. And as a consequence of employees exiting in droves, employers are hurting. According to The Work Institute, turnover costs employers approximately thirty-three percent of an employee’s annual salary. Other estimates indicate it could cost as much as 1.5 times a worker’s salary. The cumulative effect of so many workers leaving means employers are taking a serious hit; two experts estimate that employee turnover costs American businesses approximately $1 trillion. Employers need a way to stop the bleeding and mitigate the significant losses they have already incurred. Covenants not to compete can do just that: they allow employers to protect their assets and prevent situations like what we are seeing currently with companies hemorrhaging money due to a mass exodus of employees. To make matters worse, some studies show a direct correlation between quitting rate and inflation; as the number of workers quitting their jobs increases, the rate of wages and prices also increases. In this situation, workers who are not bound by a noncompete may decide they want to leave their jobs and start looking for opportunities to work elsewhere. They could be enticed by a rival company who is willing to pay them more, and if their current employer values and wants to keep them, they will feel pressured to pay the employee more to retain them. So “[i]n this context, if employed workers search more, wage competition among employers increases, leading to an increase in inflationary pressures; if they search less, wage competition falls and inflationary pressures decrease.” In other words, enforcing noncompete agreements can lead to lower rates of inflation and a better economy. Given that covenants not to compete were designed for such a time as this, with prices increasing faster than they have since 1982 and employees exiting in record numbers, it only makes sense that employers have been enforcing these covenants more frequently. Surveys show that lawsuits involving noncompetes and trade secret agreements have approximately tripled since the year 2000. This increase in enforcement has garnered widespread attention with states across the country rethinking their laws regarding covenants not to compete and culminated in President Biden calling for regulation at the federal level with Executive Order 14036, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” No question—a lot of people are talking about noncompetes right now, and many have very strong opinions on both sides of the issue. But before we can move forward and decide whether covenants not to compete are a good or bad idea for employers, employees, and the overall economy, we must first go back to the beginning and understand their history

Executive Order 14036: Promoting Competition?

Four million Americans left their jobs in July 2021. By the end of that month, the number of open jobs reached an all-time high: 10.9 million. Employees are walking out the door in record numbers as part of a trend so remarkable, we even gave it a name: the Great Resignation. With 4.3 million Americans quitting their jobs in January 2022 and 11.3 million job openings, the Great Resignation is only gaining momentum and showing no signs of slowing down. And as a consequence of employees exiting in droves, employers are hurting. According to The Work Institute, turnover costs employers approximately thirty-three percent of an employee’s annual salary. Other estimates indicate it could cost as much as 1.5 times a worker’s salary. The cumulative effect of so many workers leaving means employers are taking a serious hit; two experts estimate that employee turnover costs American businesses approximately $1 trillion. Employers need a way to stop the bleeding and mitigate the significant losses they have already incurred. Covenants not to compete can do just that: they allow employers to protect their assets and prevent situations like what we are seeing currently with companies hemorrhaging money due to a mass exodus of employees. To make matters worse, some studies show a direct correlation between quitting rate and inflation; as the number of workers quitting their jobs increases, the rate of wages and prices also increases. In this situation, workers who are not bound by a noncompete may decide they want to leave their jobs and start looking for opportunities to work elsewhere. They could be enticed by a rival company who is willing to pay them more, and if their current employer values and wants to keep them, they will feel pressured to pay the employee more to retain them. So “[i]n this context, if employed workers search more, wage competition among employers increases, leading to an increase in inflationary pressures; if they search less, wage competition falls and inflationary pressures decrease.” In other words, enforcing noncompete agreements can lead to lower rates of inflation and a better economy. Given that covenants not to compete were designed for such a time as this, with prices increasing faster than they have since 1982 and employees exiting in record numbers, it only makes sense that employers have been enforcing these covenants more frequently. Surveys show that lawsuits involving noncompetes and trade secret agreements have approximately tripled since the year 2000. This increase in enforcement has garnered widespread attention with states across the country rethinking their laws regarding covenants not to compete and culminated in President Biden calling for regulation at the federal level with Executive Order 14036, “Promoting Competition in the American Economy.” No question—a lot of people are talking about noncompetes right now, and many have very strong opinions on both sides of the issue. But before we can move forward and decide whether covenants not to compete are a good or bad idea for employers, employees, and the overall economy, we must first go back to the beginning and understand their history

Defense Expenditures and Economic Growth in Developing Countries

Armed Forces and Society, Summer, 1983.Refereed Journal ArticleStudies of the effect that defense spending has had on economic growth in less-developed countries have produced rather mixed results. We contend that this is because these studies have failed to take into account the relative financial constraints faced by individual countries. In an extension of the seminal work by Emile Benoit on defense spending and its effect on economic growth, 1 we hypothesize that relatively poor countries tend to cut back high-growth development expenditures in favor of maintaining defense programs, while relatively rich countries are much less likely to abandon development expenditures given a constant level of defense preparedness. Thus, we should expect a negative relationship between defense and growth in the poorer countries, but a positive relationship in the richer countries

Ozone exposure, uptake, and response of different-sized black cherry trees

Differences in exposure, uptake and relative sensitivity to ozone between seedling, sapling, and canopy black cherry (Prunus serotina Ehrh.) trees were characterized during two growing seasons in north central Pennsylvania. Open-grown trees of all sizes received a similar amount of ozone exposure. Seedlings had greater foliar ozone injury, expressed as adaxial stipple and early leaf senescence, than larger trees, which was correlated with their higher rates of stomatal conductance and greater rates of ozone uptake. The higher stomatal conductance and ozone uptake of seedlings was proportional to their higher (less negative) predawn xylem water potentials. Seedlings appeared to have some ability to compensate for injury because their free growth habit reduced exposure per unit leaf area compared to larger trees whose leaves were exposed to ozone throughout the entire growing season

The hullaballoo over e-learning? Technology and pluralism in economics

E-learning vs. “talk and chalk”: this binary opposition presents a conflict that has dominated existing pedagogical research. That technological innovation offers an alternative for pressured educationists to improve efficiency and question the cost-effectiveness of traditional teaching methods creates a false dichotomy. This paper addresses the influence of the erroneous “either/or” position and discards it. It claims that there is no fundamental antagonism between the two methods of instruction and proffers the alternative found in blended learning methods. The meticulous splicing of e-learning and traditional lectures liberates the Economics lecturer to deliver a pluralist perspective. Thus, technology becomes a vital tool enabling educators to escape from the limitation of monist teaching methods and guarantees that economics students can fully engage with the discipline’s vibrant debates. “Contest and controversy; orthodoxy and heterodoxy; critique and reject”: technology’s real role is to facilitate a workable space for the free thinking mind

Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council - raising the standards and benefits of sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification

Certification of sustainable tourism and ecotourism can help to reduce the negative environmental and social impacts of tourism, ensure that the tourism industry is held accountable and provide marketing benefits to those firms that meet the certification standards. Reports by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World Tourism Organization (WTO) have cited the benefits of certification and many governments, NGOs and other stakeholders are introducing national, regional and international certification programs. There is consensus that the increasing numbers of certification programs would benefit from shared functions such as marketing, training and development, while supply chains and consumers would benefit from the setting of standards. Some two years ago, the Rainforest Alliance, with funding from the Ford Foundation and help from its Advisory Committees of NGOs, multilateral agencies and industry representatives, initiated a study of the feasibility of establishing an international Sustainable Tourism Stewardship Council (STSC) to promote globally recognized, high-quality certification programs for sustainable tourism and ecotourism through a process of information sharing, marketing, and assessment of standards. (Certification is defined as the procedure by which the certification/awarding body gives written assurance and awards a logo (to the consumer and the industry in general) to signify that a product, process, service, or management system conforms to specified requirements. Accreditation is key to the role of a Stewardship Council, a body that grants certifying powers. In effect it certifies that the certifiers are doing their job correctly.) This report summarizes the findings over the two years of the study. During the study period, the authors documented growing international agreement about the need for a sound accreditation program to assess and help standardize the rapidly growing number of certification programs for the sustainable and ecotourism markets. The study involved a broad range of experts around the globe from grassroots and indigenous community activists to key tourism firms to high-level officials in UN and international environmental organizations. The need for a STSC was publicly endorsed at the World Ecotourism Summit (WES) and incorporated in its final communiqué. The Rainforest Alliance (and this project's Advisory Committees) acknowledges that certification and accreditation are not a panacea for all the problems associated with unsustainable tourism. Certification is one important tool currently being used and its merits and weaknesses must be recognized. However the study and the report presented hereby are intended to address specifically the feasibility of implementing a Stewardship Council as an accreditation organization for sustainable tourism and ecotourism certification. This report analyzes the state of the art in tourism certification and the lessons to be learned from accreditation in other sectors. Based on extensive consultation, it profiles key stakeholders and considers needs that the STSC can satisfy, and methods to do so. It proposes an organizational blueprint for a STSC that grows through a phased implementation to allow for bottom-up development of agendas and structures. It benchmarks the criteria used in certification at present to consider the feasibility of an international standard, and it also benchmarks principles and guidelines for managing tourism certification that can form the basis of accreditation criteria. As a result of the extensive consultation process, we propose three phases of development aimed at improving the quality of certification programs (and thus the sustainability of tourism) and address different issues affecting tourism certification. • Phase 1: STSC-Network to share information and gain consensus on priorities and processes. It is recommended that the STSC starts as a Network for a period of two years within which a wide range of stakeholders can consider the results of this feasibility study and the applicability in different regions, discuss the contents of a possible international standard and the necessary regional variations. The Network phase also gives tourism certification programs a vehicle to build trust and to take ownership of the systems proposed. • Phase 2: STSC-Association to market certified products, provide guidance to countries seeking to establish or upgrade certification programs, and reach agreement on standards and processes. The STSC-Association phase allows tourism certification programs and other stakeholders to agree on international standards and criteria and methods to assess how programs meet these standards, while benefiting from joint marketing and training that increases the exposure of the tourism certification programs and improves their performance. The Association phase is a necessary stepping-stone to allow tourism certification programs to make the necessary improvements to be able to meet accreditation requirements. • Phase 3: STSC-Accreditation to accredit and market certification programs that meet the agreed upon standards and demonstrate capacity to certify. This phase finally includes all key functions of the STSC by building on the agreements made at the Association phase and introducing the key element of accreditation. Structures from the Association are kept and the function of accreditation is outsourced to be able to maintain training and marketing functions separate from decision-making on which certification programs are accredited, and in doing so, guarantee independence and transparency and avoid conflicts of interest

VCU Research Festival: From Ideas to Impact

Since its beginning, VCU has been inextricably intertwined with the Richmond community - physically, socially, and economically. That dynamic interdependence, if leveraged correctly, can help us achieve the vision of Quest 2028. VCU’s website notes, “...our past has made us who we are…” And that past has not always helped maintain our critical relationship with the surrounding community. It is telling that this year’s VCU Common Book is Organ Thieves — a book about VCU’s own Henrietta Lacks story. Research at VCU led to Virginia’s first organ transplants, but there are different stories we can tell about VCU’s historic roads to success. And the stories our community has heard have not always built bridges. We want to change that. We also want to open VCU’s doors to the surrounding community. Many academic institutions are seen as “ivory towers,” but that is not the mission of VCU. We want to pull back the curtain on the impactful, innovative research happening here so that the community better understands what we’re working on. Where and how can we engage the Richmond community with VCU’s research and earn their trust? Richmonders love festivals. They are a part of our shared culture — a place where we can celebrate differences, learn from each other, and enjoy being good neighbors. We propose a VCU Research festival to rebuild the critical relationship between VCU and the community. The VCU Research Festival will build goodwill with the community surrounding VCU by showcasing the impactful and innovative research happening at VCU and the VCU Health System (referred to collectively as “OneVCU”). We envision a oneday event where diverse VCU faculty and student researchers from across disciplines will showcase their work in a single space, emphasizing interactive/hands-on displays that engage attendees. Our goal is for the event to feel like a festival, including art performances, TED Talkstyle presentations, food trucks, etc. The event will be open to the public, helping VCU share its mission with the community, demonstrate its commitment to benefiting humanity at large, and lay the additional groundwork for community-engaged research. Key external stakeholders, including elected officials, donors, and business leaders, would be invited to attend, improving VCU’s local reputation and national prominence. Planning of the event will require the collaborative work of several units at VCU, including the Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation (OVPRI), University Relations, the Provost’s office, and the Office of Institutional Equity, Effectiveness, and Success

Vaccine conjugate for treatment of avian diseases

A method of producing active immunity against infectious bursal disease virus in an avian subject comprises administering to the subject a vaccine conjugate consisting essentially of a live virus and a neutralizing factor bound to the live virus. The neutralizing factor is selected from the group consisting of antibodies and antibody fragments. The live virus is one capable of producing disease in the subject, and the antibody or antibody fragment is one capable of neutralizing the live virus. A preferred route of administration to birds is by in ovo administration