Rethinking the Fiscal Relationship Between Public Lands and Public Land Counties: County Payments 4.0

In 1908, Congress authorized payments to local governments, including counties and school districts, to compensate for the non-taxable status of the newly established forest reserves within their boundaries. The original program shared revenue generated from commercial activities on public lands, e.g. timber harvesting, not anticipating the major changes in the volume and types of activities on National Forest lands, particularly in the Pacific Northwest, that have played out over the past century. Two subsequent reforms – the appropriated Payments in Lieu of Taxes (PILT) in 1976 and ‘transition’ payments made between 1990 and 2018, including payments associated with the Northwest Forest Plan and the Secure Rural Schools and Community Self-Determination Act (SRS) – have yet to deliver a permanent or effective policy solution that matches county payments to local governments’ economic needs or forest management objectives. This paper analyzes three policy options: a status quo option of PILT and revenue sharing payments; reauthorization of SRS; and the creation of a new permanent trust fund at the federal level. The paper concludes that the trust option (‘County Payments 4.0’) could resolve key challenges by stabilizing and growing revenue over time, eliminating the need for cycles of conditional appropriations, and providing flexibility to address economic and forest management needs in public land counties

Sustainability of Maine’s Emerging Wine Industry

Consumers, businesses and business sectors, and policymakers are increasingly concerned with sustainability, and the global wine industry has long acknowledged concerns about the social, environmental, and economic sustainability of their industry. Several wine regions, including France, Australia, and South Africa, have developed workbooks and policies for sustainable wine production, but Maine’s emerging wine industry has yet to explore the concept of sustainability as it relates to its operations. In this project, designed in collaboration with the Maine Winery Guild, we interviewed the owners of 10 Maine wineries and analyzed how they define and enact sustainability along with the obstacles they face in sustainability efforts. This research aims to provide baseline information that will help the guild and policymakers formulate actions that enable Maine’s wine industry to grow and compete with other sustainability-conscious wine regions

Writing Instruction and Assignments in an Honors Curriculum: Perceptions of Effectiveness

Learning to write well is a significant outcome of higher education, as confirmed and illustrated in the Written Communication VALUE Rubric of the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Bennett notes that writing well is a singularly important capability, indicating that virtually all higher education programs intend for students to write better when they graduate than when they enrolled. Moskovitz refers to an AAC&U survey of member institutions in which writing topped the list of learning outcomes for all students. Scholars agree that writing and thinking are linked. Oatley and Djikic discuss how writing externalizes thinking by using various media in the processes of manipulating symbols, and Kovac suggests that connections between writing and thinking express the metaphorical interactions between language and thought. Menary notes that the creation and manipulation of written texts is a fundamental component of our cognitive processing, such that writing transforms our cognitive abilities

DISAGGREGATED EFFECTS OF COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION USAGE PATTERNS ON SOCIAL NETWORKS

Various studies have reported that computer-mediated communication (CMC) increases, decreases and has no effect on social capital. These conflicting outcomes of CMC on social ties resulted in a rich debate. However, the core question remains unanswered - how does usage of CMC disrupt relationships and make individuals isolated but at the same time function as a channel for creating new and enduring social ties within and across the populations? We measure CMC usage for learning activities, leisure and socializing communications, and entertainment purpose. We find that those who use CMC more for entertainment have less developed social networks irrespective of the contexts we studied. Those who use CMC for leisure and socializing communication have well developed broader social networks and close friendships networks but less developed work networks. Finally, those who use CMC more for learning activities are more central in work networks but less central in broader social networks and close friendship networks

Heavy Crane Foundations on Soft Clay

A very large mobile crane was used to lift a 3,150 kN steam generator through the roof of the containment building of a nuclear power plant. The maximum load on the crane was 19.8 MN, giving a track pressure of almost 600 kPa. Soil conditions were stiff clay underlain by softer clay. This paper describes the bearing capacity and settlement analysis performed to establish a suitable shallow foundation for the crane. The foundation load test confirmed that soil conditions had been adequately defined and that the foundation design was satisfactory

A new approach to generating research-quality data through citizen science: The USA National Phenology Monitoring System

Phenology is one of the most sensitive biological responses to climate change, and recent changes in phenology have the potential to shake up ecosystems. In some cases, it appears they already are. Thus, for ecological reasons it is critical that we improve our understanding of species’ phenologies and how these phenologies are responding to recent, rapid climate change. Phenological events like flowering and bird migrations are easy to observe, culturally important, and, at a fundamental level, naturally inspire human curiosity— thus providing an excellent opportunity to engage citizen scientists. The USA National Phenology Network has recently initiated a national effort to encourage people at different levels of expertise—from backyard naturalists to professional scientists—to observe phenological events and contribute to a national database that will be used to greatly improve our understanding of spatio-temporal variation in phenology and associated phenological responses to climate change.

Traditional phenological observation protocols identify specific dates at which individual phenological events are observed. The scientific usefulness of long-term phenological observations could be improved with a more carefully structured protocol. At the USA-NPN we have developed a new approach that directs observers to record each day that they observe an individual plant, and to assess and report the state of specific life stages (or phenophases) as occurring or not occurring on that plant for each observation date. Evaluation is phrased in terms of simple, easy-to-understand, questions (e.g. “Do you see open flowers?”), which makes it very appropriate for a citizen science audience. From this method, a rich dataset of phenological metrics can be extracted, including the duration of a phenophase (e.g. open flowers), the beginning and end points of a phenophase (e.g. traditional phenological events such as first flower and last flower), multiple distinct occurrences of phenophases within a single growing season (e.g multiple flowering events, common in drought-prone regions), as well as quantification of sampling frequency and observational uncertainties. These features greatly enhance the utility of the resulting data for statistical analyses addressing questions such as how phenological events vary in time and space, and in response to global change. This new protocol is an important step forward, and its widespread adoption will increase the scientific value of data collected by citizen scientists.
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Validation of a Measure of Alliance for an Adolescent Inpatient Setting

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112270/1/cpp1901.pd

Synthetic Compound Libraries Displayed on the Surface of Encoded Bacteriophage

AbstractWe describe a technology for attaching libraries of synthetic compounds to coat proteins of bacteriophage particles such that the identity of the chemical structure is encoded in the genome of the phage, analogous to peptides displayed on phage surfaces by conventional phage-display techniques. This format allows a library of synthetic compounds to be screened very efficiently as a single pool. Encoded phage serve as extremely robust reporters of the presence of each compound, providing exquisite sensitivity for identification of active compounds engaged in complex biological processes such as receptor-mediated endocytosis and transcytosis. To evaluate this approach, we constructed a library of 980 analogs of folic acid displayed on T7 phage, and demonstrated rapid identification of compounds that bind to folate receptor and direct endocytosis of associated phage particles into cells that express the targeted receptor