State of the Artist: Challenges to the New York State Arts & Entertainment Industry and its Workforce

[Excerpt] In 2009, with support from Empire State Development (ESD), the Cornell University ILR School published its first report on the state of the New York arts and entertainment (A&E) workforce, Empire State’s Cultural Capital at Risk? Assessing Challenges to the Workforce and the Educational Infrastructure for New York State’s Arts and Entertainment Industry. The report analyzed a number of key characteristics of the A&E workforce across electronic media, live performing, and visual arts, identifying the most pressing issues for New York A&E workers and the support structures in place to protect their interests. The report concluded by proposing a number of questions to policymakers to be considered in future legislation. State of the Artist both updates this analysis of the State A&E workforce and analyzes trends in recent years based on comparable data presented in the 2009 report. The current report draws from government surveys, industry reports, and interviews with key stakeholders to assess the condition of the NYS A&E industry and its workforce, identifying key issues faced by workers in each sector of the industry. In addition to an extensive review of current literature, data from primary and secondary sources was analyzed to assess the state of the industry and major trends by sector. Survey data from the US Census Bureau and Department of Labor, notably from the American Community Survey (ACS), were retrieved to isolate trends in A&E workforce employment patterns, demographics, and income by occupational group. This analysis, including a conference attended by industry leaders and representatives to assess reactions to preliminary findings, served to identify current challenges facing this vital workforce to the state economy. Often left out of discussions about precarious workers, many working within the A&E industry continue to face high rates of contingent and project-based employment, low average income, and inadequate employment protections—all of which are explored here. State of the Artist concludes with a summary of public policies currently in place as well as those under consideration, providing an updated set of questions for New York policymakers

Habitat use, movements and spring migration chronology and corridors of female gadwalls that winter along the Louisiana Gulf Coast

The Louisiana Gulf Coast is an important wintering area for North American gadwall (Anas strepera). Conservation of winter habitat is a top priority of the Gulf Coast Joint Venture. Quantitative estimates of habitat use by wintering gadwall would help improve energetic demand models and subsequent estimates of habitat requirements. I used satellite telemetry (PTTs) to estimate winter habitat and refuge uses, spring migration chronology and corridors, as well as inter- and intra-regional winter movements of females. I used a split-plot MANOVA to evaluate the effects of individual females, female age, winter, hunt periods within winter, time of day, and all possible interactions among these explanatory variables on habitat use. I used a mixed model ANOVA to evaluate the effects of individual females, female age, winter, hunt periods within winter, time of day, and all possible interactions of these explanatory variables on refuge use. I used mixed models to evaluate the effects of hunt periods within winter, refuge use, winter, individual female, female age, and body condition at time of capture on intra-regional movements. Finally, I used a MANOVA to evaluate the effects of female age, spring of tracking, and body condition at time of capture on several spring migration parameters. I found that habitat use in winter 2007-08 was dominated by intermediate marsh, whereas habitat use during winter 2008-09 showed an increased dependence on freshwater marsh (P = 0.0001). Use of non-hunted refuges by adult females was greater when hunting season was open than when closed (P = 0.0061). I found no significant relationships among the explanatory variables and intra-regional movements (all Ps \u3e 0.09). Peak migratory departure from the Louisiana Gulf Coast Chenier Plain occurred during late-March to early-April. HY females traveled a greater total migratory distance, spent more days migrating, used more stopovers, and arrived at inferred breeding locations later than did AHY females (all Ps ≤ 0.061). My results suggest that intermediate marsh is important for wintering gadwall; however, freshwater marsh may become important after tidal surge events. Finally, my migration data provides habitat managers with quantitative information to consider when implementing conservation programs and management practices

Farm Level Incidence of the U.S. Farm Policy Proposal to the WTO

A farm level simulation model is used to analyze the financial impacts of the U.S. proposal to the WTO to reduce farm subsidy payments. The impacts are examined for farms of different sizes, debt positions, and household characteristics. Results indicate that cash flow impacts of the policy change are much greater than net worth impacts.Agricultural and Food Policy,

Misrecognition of the Rights of People with Epilepsy in Zimbabwe: A Social Justice Perspective

Epilepsy affects 4 to 14 people per 1,000, that is, an estimated 50 million people worldwide, making it the most common global neurological condition (Shorvon, 2009; WHO, 2016). It is more prevalent in the Global South, where 80 percent of people with epilepsy reside, due to “poorer perinatal care and standards of nutrition and public hygiene, and the greater risk of brain injury, cerebral infection, or other acquired cerebral conditions” (Shorvon, 2009, p. 3). In Africa alone, epilepsy directly affects about 10 million people (WHO, 2015). Indigenous cultural and religious misunderstanding affects the management of this neurological condition in many parts of the world, especially in Africa. This has led to misrecognition of the rights of people living with epilepsy, which leaves them socially isolated and makes it difficult for them to develop social networks and to access treatment, education and training, and employment. This chapter explores the misrecognition and misrepresentation of people with epilepsy, and associated injustices relating to dominant indigenous cultural and religious perspectives on epilepsy in Africa and consequent human rights omissions found in a study of persons with epilepsy in Harare, Zimbabwe. It provides an overview of perspectives on epilepsy in Africa and the injustices stemming from the continued exclusion of people with epilepsy in Zimbabwe. It suggests that Nancy Fraser’s (2000, 2001, 2008, 2010) theory of social justice offers a framework for understanding the injustices ensuing from the misrecognition of people with epilepsy and ends by suggesting an integrated rights-based model for epilepsy management in Zimbabwe and other African countries

Integration of immunotherapy into adjuvant therapy for resected non-small-cell lung cancer: ALCHEMIST chemo-IO (ACCIO)

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) causes significant mortality each year. After successful resection of disease stage IB (\u3e4 cm) to IIIA (per AJCC 7), adjuvant platinum-based chemotherapy improves median overall survival and is the standard of care, but many patients still experience recurrence of disease. An adjuvant regimen with greater efficacy could substantially improve outcomes. Pembrolizumab, a programmed cell death-1 inhibitor, has become an important option in the treatment of metastatic NSCLC. ALCHEMIST is a clinical trial platform of the National Cancer Institute that includes biomarker analysis for resected NSCLC and supports therapeutic trials including A081801 (ACCIO), a three-arm study that will evaluate both concurrent chemotherapy plus pembrolizumab and sequential chemotherapy followed by pembrolizumab to standard of care adjuvant platinum-based chemotherapy

Integrated Geophysical Investigation of the St. James Fault Complex: A Case Study

We noninvasively detected the characteristics and location of a regional fault in an area of poor bedrock exposure complicated by karst weathering features in the subsurface. Because this regional fault is associated with sinkhole formation, its location is important for hazard avoidance. The bedrock lithologies on either side of the fault trace are similar; hence, we chose an approach that capitalized on the complementary strengths of very low frequency (VLF) electromagnetic, resistivity, and gravity methods. VLF proved most useful as a first-order reconnaissance tool, allowing us to define a narrow target area for further geophysical exploration. Fault-related epikarst was delineated using resistivity. Ultimately, a high-resolution gravity survey and subsequent inverse modeling using the results of the resistivity survey helped to further constrain the location and approximate orientation of the fault. The combined results indicated that the location of the fault trace needed to be adjusted 53 m south of the current published location and was consistent with a north-dipping thrust fault. Additionally, a gravity low south of the fault trace agreed with the location of conductive material from the resistivity and VLF surveys. We interpreted these anomalies to represent enhanced epikarst in the fault footwall. We clearly found that a staged approach involving a progression of methods beginning with a reconnaissance VLF survey, followed by high-resolution gravity and electrical resistivity surveys, can be used to characterize a fault and fault-related karst in an area of poor bedrock surface exposure

Computing Scalable Multivariate Glocal Invariants of Large (Brain-) Graphs

Graphs are quickly emerging as a leading abstraction for the representation of data. One important application domain originates from an emerging discipline called "connectomics". Connectomics studies the brain as a graph; vertices correspond to neurons (or collections thereof) and edges correspond to structural or functional connections between them. To explore the variability of connectomes---to address both basic science questions regarding the structure of the brain, and medical health questions about psychiatry and neurology---one can study the topological properties of these brain-graphs. We define multivariate glocal graph invariants: these are features of the graph that capture various local and global topological properties of the graphs. We show that the collection of features can collectively be computed via a combination of daisy-chaining, sparse matrix representation and computations, and efficient approximations. Our custom open-source Python package serves as a back-end to a Web-service that we have created to enable researchers to upload graphs, and download the corresponding invariants in a number of different formats. Moreover, we built this package to support distributed processing on multicore machines. This is therefore an enabling technology for network science, lowering the barrier of entry by providing tools to biologists and analysts who otherwise lack these capabilities. As a demonstration, we run our code on 120 brain-graphs, each with approximately 16M vertices and up to 90M edges.Comment: Published as part of 2013 IEEE GlobalSIP conferenc

Robustness for Space-Bounded Statistical Zero Knowledge

We show that the space-bounded Statistical Zero Knowledge classes SZK_L and NISZK_L are surprisingly robust, in that the power of the verifier and simulator can be strengthened or weakened without affecting the resulting class. Coupled with other recent characterizations of these classes [Eric Allender et al., 2023], this can be viewed as lending support to the conjecture that these classes may coincide with the non-space-bounded classes SZK and NISZK, respectively