Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

The Emotional Arcs Of Stories Are Dominated By Six Basic Shapes, Andrew J. Reagan, Lewis Mitchell, Dilan Kiley, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Advances in computing power, natural language processing, and digitization of text now make it possible to study a culture’s evolution through its texts using a ‘big data’ lens. Our ability to communicate relies in part upon a shared emotional experience, with stories often following distinct emotional trajectories and forming patterns that are meaningful to us. Here, by classifying the emotional arcs for a filtered subset of 1,327 stories from Project Gutenberg’s fiction collection, we find a set of six core emotional arcs which form the essential building blocks of complex emotional trajectories. We strengthen our findings by separately applying matrix …

Deepening Ties Between The Pontifical Catholic University Of Peru And The University Of Vermont, Fred C. Pond, Laurie Kutner

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Building relationships between university libraries The umbrella affiliation agreement between the University of Vermont and PUCP, in effect since 2010, initially focused on the subject areas of biomedical technology and instrumentation. However, as relationships on the two campuses were built and strengthened, other collaborative opportunities beyond the original focus emerged, including with Engineering, Public Administration, and the Libraries. Kathia Hanza, director of PUCP Libraries, expressed interest in facilitating our return in March 2016, to focus on development of library research guides as a mechanism to present library resources in contextually meaningful ways. When we did return in March, it was …

Coupled Impacts Of Climate And Land Use Change Across A River-Lake Continuum: Insights From An Integrated Assessment Model Of Lake Champlain's Missisquoi Basin, 2000-2040, Asim Zia, Arne Bomblies, Andrew W. Schroth, Christopher Koliba, Peter D.F. Isles, Yushiou Tsai, Ibrahim N. Mohammed, Gabriela Bucini, Patrick J. Clemins, Scott Turnbull, Morgan Rodgers, Ahmed Hamed, Brian Beckage, Jonathan Winter

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Global climate change (GCC) is projected to bring higher-intensity precipitation and higher-variability temperature regimes to the Northeastern United States. The interactive effects of GCC with anthropogenic land use and land cover changes (LULCCs) are unknown for watershed level hydrological dynamics and nutrient fluxes to freshwater lakes. Increased nutrient fluxes can promote harmful algal blooms, also exacerbated by warmer water temperatures due to GCC. To address the complex interactions of climate, land and humans, we developed a cascading integrated assessment model to test the impacts of GCC and LULCC on the hydrological regime, water temperature, water quality, bloom duration and severity …

Estimating Economic Losses To Tourism In Africa From The Illegal Killing Of Elephants, Robin Naidoo, Brendan Fisher, Andrea Manica, Andrew Balmford

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Recent surveys suggest tens of thousands of elephants are being poached annually across Africa, putting the two species at risk across much of their range. Although the financial motivations for ivory poaching are clear, the economic benefits of elephant conservation are poorly understood. We use Bayesian statistical modelling of tourist visits to protected areas, to quantify the lost economic benefits that poached elephants would have delivered to African countries via tourism. Our results show these figures are substantial (∼USD $25 million annually), and that the lost benefits exceed the anti-poaching costs necessary to stop elephant declines across the continent's savannah …

Mapping The Way To Success: Collaborating With Academic Faculty On Library Services And Information Literacy For International Students, Fred C. Pond, Graham Sherriff, Nancy Fawley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

The University of Vermont recently introduced a formal pathway for international students to gain access to UVM’s degree programs at both an undergraduate and graduate level. The Global Gateway Program (GGP) offers academic courses while providing additional support for the cultural and pedagogical needs of English as a Foreign Language students. International students are a new and expanding demographic with diverse educational backgrounds, language needs and cultural characteristics. We will address strategies to help librarians prepare and anticipate a library’s role with international students, paying particular attention to being a part of the curriculum and introducing principles of information literacy.

Disaggregating The Evidence Linking Biodiversity And Ecosystem Services, Taylor H. Ricketts, Keri B. Watson, Insu Koh, Alicia M. Ellis, Charles C. Nicholson, Stephen Posner, Leif L. Richardson, Laura J. Sonter

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Ecosystem services (ES) are an increasingly popular policy framework for connecting biodiversity with human well-being. These efforts typically assume that biodiversity and ES covary, but the relationship between them remains remarkably unclear. Here we analyse >500 recent papers and show that reported relationships differ among ES, methods of measuring biodiversity and ES, and three different approaches to linking them (spatial correlations, management comparisons and functional experiments). For spatial correlations, biodiversity relates more strongly to measures of ES supply than to resulting human benefits. For management comparisons, biodiversity of â € service providers' predicts ES more often than biodiversity of functionally …

Apples To Apples? Lessons Learned From A Comparative Evaluation Of Online Platforms For Interactive Tutorials, Graham Sherriff

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

What does your library need from a tutorials platform? For several years, the University of Vermont has flipped library instruction with tutorials created in Guide on the Side. This open-source program, provided by the University of Arizona, is a simple tool for producing frame-based tutorials centered on the learner’s interaction with web content. UVM adopted it principally because of its suitability to formative learning. But in 2016 Springshare launched LibWizard, an alternative platform for frame-based tutorials. It offered important functionalities that were not available in Guide on the Side, while lacking others that were integral features of our existing tutorials. …

The 360° Feedback Model For Library Instructors: Observing, Teaching, Reflecting, Adapting, Daisy S. Benson, Daniel L. Desanto

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

In a model that has developed over the past few years, instruction librarians at the University of Vermont sought to create better opportunities to talk with one another about teaching, observe each other’s classes, provide constructive feedback, and engage in reflective practice.

Opportunities For Biodiversity Gains Under The World's Largest Reforestation Programme, Fangyuan Hua, Xiaoyang Wang, Xinlei Zheng, Brendan Fisher, Lin Wang, Jianguo Zhu, Ya Tang, Douglas W. Yu, David S. Wilcove

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Reforestation is a critical means of addressing the environmental and social problems of deforestation. China's Grain-for-Green Program (GFGP) is the world's largest reforestation scheme. Here we provide the first nationwide assessment of the tree composition of GFGP forests and the first combined ecological and economic study aimed at understanding GFGP's biodiversity implications. Across China, GFGP forests are overwhelmingly monocultures or compositionally simple mixed forests. Focusing on birds and bees in Sichuan Province, we find that GFGP reforestation results in modest gains (via mixed forest) and losses (via monocultures) of bird diversity, along with major losses of bee diversity. Moreover, all …

Spatial And Temporal Dynamics And Value Of Nature-Based Recreation, Estimated Via Social Media, Laura J. Sonter, Keri B. Watson, Spencer A. Wood, Taylor H. Ricketts

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Conserved lands provide multiple ecosystem services, including opportunities for naturebased recreation. Managing this service requires understanding the landscape attributes underpinning its provision, and how changes in land management affect its contribution to human wellbeing over time. However, evidence from both spatially explicit and temporally dynamic analyses is scarce, often due to data limitations. In this study, we investigated nature-based recreation within conserved lands in Vermont, USA.We used geotagged photographs uploaded to the photo-sharingwebsite Flickr to quantify visits by in-state and outof- state visitors, and we multiplied visits by mean trip expenditures to show that conserved lands contributed US $1.8 billion …

Multiple Post-Domestication Origins Of Kabuli Chickpea Through Allelic Variation In A Diversification-Associated Transcription Factor, R. Varma Penmetsa, Noelia Carrasquilla-Garcia, Emily M. Bergmann, Lisa Vance, Brenna Castro, Mulualem T. Kassa, Birinchi K. Sarma, Subhojit Datta, Andrew D. Farmer, Jong Min Baek, Clarice J. Coyne, Rajeev K. Varshney, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg, Douglas R. Cook

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Chickpea (Cicer arietinum) is among the founder crops domesticated in the Fertile Crescent. One of two major forms of chickpea, the so-called kabuli type, has white flowers and light-colored seed coats, properties not known to exist in the wild progenitor. The origin of the kabuli form has been enigmatic. We genotyped a collection of wild and cultivated chickpea genotypes with 538 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and examined patterns of molecular diversity relative to geographical sources and market types. In addition, we examined sequence and expression variation in candidate anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway genes. A reduction in genetic diversity and extensive genetic …

Pyrogenic Fuels Produced By Savanna Trees Can Engineer Humid Savannas, William J. Platt, Darin P. Ellair, Jean M. Huffman, Stephen E. Potts, Brian Beckage

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Natural fires ignited by lightning strikes following droughts frequently are posited as the ecological mechanism maintaining discontinuous tree cover and grass-dominated ground layers in savannas. Such fires, however, may not reliably maintain humid savannas. We propose that savanna trees producing pyrogenic shed leaves might engineer fire characteristics, affecting ground-layer plants in ways that maintain humid savannas. We explored our hypothesis in a high-rainfall, frequently burned pine savanna in which the dominant tree, longleaf pine (Pinus palustris), produces resinous needles that become highly flammable when shed and dried. We postulated that pyrogenic needles should have much greater influence on fire characteristics …

Conjoint Analysis Of Farmers' Response To Conservation Incentives, David Conner, Jennifer Miller, Asim Zia, Qingbin Wang, Heather Darby

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Environmental degradation threatens the long term resiliency of the US food and farming system. While USDA has provided conservation incentives for the adoption of best management practices (BMPs), only a small percentage of farms have participated in such conservation programs. This study uses conjoint analysis to examine Vermont farmers' underlying preferences and willingness-to-accept (WTA) incentives for three common BMPs. Based on the results of this survey, we hypothesize that federal cost share programs' payments are below preferred incentive levels and that less familiar and more complex BMPs require a higher payment. Our implications focus on strategies to test these hypotheses …

Vaporous Marketing: Uncovering Pervasive Electronic Cigarette Advertisements On Twitter, Eric M. Clark, Chris A. Jones, Jake Ryland Williams, Allison N. Kurti, Mitchell Craig Norotsky, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background Twitter has become the "wild-west" of marketing and promotional strategies for advertisement agencies. Electronic cigarettes have been heavily marketed across Twitter feeds, offering discounts, "kid-friendly" flavors, algorithmically generated false testimonials, and free samples. Methods All electronic cigarette keyword related tweets from a 10% sample of Twitter spanning January 2012 through December 2014 (approximately 850,000 total tweets) were identified and categorized as Automated or Organic by combining a keyword classification and a machine trained Human Detection algorithm. A sentiment analysis using Hedonometrics was performed on Organic tweets to quantify the change in consumer sentiments over time. Commercialized tweets were topically …

Local Adaptation Or Foreign Advantage? Effective Use Of A Single-Test Site Common Garden To Evaluate Adaptation Across Ecological Scales, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg, Edward Marques, Courtney J. Murren

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Farmer Perceptions Of Climate Change: Associations With Observed Temperature And Precipitation Trends, Irrigation, And Climate Beliefs, Meredith T. Niles, Nathaniel D. Mueller

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

How individuals perceive climate change is linked to whether individuals support climate policies and whether they alter their own climate-related behaviors, yet climate perceptions may be influenced by many factors beyond local shifts in weather. Infrastructure designed to control or regulate natural resources may serve as an important lens through which people experience climate, and thus may influence perceptions. Likewise, perceptions may be influenced by personal beliefs about climate change and whether it is human-induced. Here we examine farmer perceptions of historical climate change, how perceptions are related to observed trends in regional climate, how perceptions are related to the …

Achieving Staff Buy-In, Amber Billey, Jeanene Light, Donna O'Malley

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Three developments in provision of technical services at the University of Vermont Libraries united to prompt a thorough workflow review. While loss of technical services librarians and staff finally triggered this examination, the growing challenges of e-resources management, and the lingering effects of a partial merger of technical services functions within the libraries also led to a sense of urgency. The Dean of University Libraries charged a task force in spring 2014 to “understand and evaluate acquisitions and resource description processes across University Libraries.”

A cross-library task force conducted a literature review, interviewed each person in the library who performed …

Reviews Of Science For Science Librarians: The Challenge Of The Zika Virus: An Emerging Arbovirus Disease, Frances A. Delwiche

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

First identified in Uganda in 1947, the Zika virus simmered quietly for sixty years, occasionally causing a mild dengue-like illness across parts of central Africa and equatorial Asia. However, since 2007, three large outbreaks have occurred: first in Micronesia, then in French Polynesia in 2013-2014, and as an epidemic involving Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America in 2015-2016. This paper reviews the virology of the Zika virus, its modes of transmission, symptoms of Zika Virus Disease, the association of Zika infections with microcephaly and Guillain-Barre Syndrome, prevention of Zika infections, and ongoing efforts to develop a vaccine.

Surface Permeability Of Natural And Engineered Porous Building Materials, David Grover, Cabot R. Savidge, Laura Townsend, Odanis Rosario, Liang Bo Hu, Donna M. Rizzo, Mandar M. Dewoolkar

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Characterization of surface gas permeability measurements on a variety of natural and engineered building materials using two relatively new, non-destructive surface permeameters is presented. Surface gas permeability measurements were consistent for both laboratory and field applications and correlated well with bulk gas permeability measurements. This research indicates that surface permeability measurements could provide reliable estimates of bulk gas permeability; and due to the non-destructive nature and relative sampling ease of both surface gas permeability tools, it is possible to quantify the range of the spatial autocorrelation, heterogeneity, and anisotropy in porous building materials and their degree of degradation from weathering.

Game Story Space Of Professional Sports: Australian Rules Football, Dilan Patrick Kiley, Andrew J. Reagan, Lewis Mitchell, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Sports are spontaneous generators of stories. Through skill and chance, the script of each game is dynamically written in real time by players acting out possible trajectories allowed by a sport's rules. By properly characterizing a given sport's ecology of "game stories," we are able to capture the sport's capacity for unfolding interesting narratives, in part by contrasting them with random walks. Here we explore the game story space afforded by a data set of 1310 Australian Football League (AFL) score lines. We find that AFL games exhibit a continuous spectrum of stories rather than distinct clusters. We show how …

Do Insect Outbreaks Reduce The Severity Of Subsequent Forest Fires?, Garrett W. Meigs, Harold S.J. Zald, John L. Campbell, William S. Keeton, Robert E. Kennedy

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Understanding the causes and consequences of rapid environmental change is an essential scientific frontier, particularly given the threat of climate- and land use-induced changes in disturbance regimes. In western North America, recent widespread insect outbreaks and wildfires have sparked acute concerns about potential insect-fire interactions. Although previous research shows that insect activity typically does not increase wildfire likelihood, key uncertainties remain regarding insect effects on wildfire severity (i.e., ecological impact). Recent assessments indicate that outbreak severity and burn severity are not strongly associated, but these studies have been limited to specific insect or fire events. Here, we present a regional …

Engaging Students And Faculty In The Evaluation Of A Usmle Review Product: Implications For Library Collection Development, Alice Stokes, Jeanene Light

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Introduction: Study materials for USMLE exams are some of the most commonly requested materials at Dana Medical Library. In Fall 2015, the Dana Medical Library received several student requests for online USMLE preparation materials. Librarians arranged for a trial of a new USMLE test preparation software available for library licensing. Librarians designed a plan for soliciting student and faculty feedback to inform the purchasing decision.

Methods: The Dana Medical Library ran a 4-week trial of the USMLE preparation software. Students and faculty were notified of the product trial through meetings, e-mail, signs in the library and social media. Trial participants …

A Regional Model For Malaria Vector Developmental Habitats Evaluated Using Explicit, Pond-Resolving Surface Hydrology Simulations, Ernest Ohene Asare, Adrian Mark Tompkins, Arne Bomblies

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Dynamical malaria models can relate precipitation to the availability of vector breeding sites using simple models of surface hydrology. Here, a revised scheme is developed for the VECTRI malaria model, which is evaluated alongside the default scheme using a two year simulation by HYDREMATS, a 10 metre resolution, village-scale model that explicitly simulates individual ponds. Despite the simplicity of the two VECTRI surface hydrology parametrization schemes, …

The Geography Of Gender Inequality, Brendan Fisher, Robin Naidoo

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Reducing gender inequality is a major policy concern worldwide, and one of the Sustainable Development Goals. However, our understanding of the magnitude and spatial distribution of gender inequality results either from limited-scale case studies or from national-level statistics. Here, we produce the first high resolution map of gender inequality by analyzing over 689,000 households in 47 countries. Across these countries, we find that male-headed households have, on average, 13% more asset wealth and 303% more land for agriculture than do female-headed households. However, this aggregate global result masks a high degree of spatial heterogeneity, with bands of both high inequality …

The Moral Basis For Conservation - Reflections On Dickman Et Al., Douglas Sheil, Jane Cohen, Carol J.Pierce Colfer, David Price, Rajindra Puri, Manuel Ruiz-Perez, Yulia Sugandi, Paul Vedeld, Eva Wollenberg, Yurdi Yasmi

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Salinity Adaptation And The Contribution Of Parental Environmental Effects In Medicago Truncatula, Ken S. Moriuchi, Maren L. Friesen, Matilde A. Cordeiro, Mounawer Badri, Wendy T. Vu, Bradley J. Main, Mohamed Elarbi Aouani, Sergey V. Nuzhdin, Sharon Y. Strauss, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. High soil salinity negatively influences plant growth and yield. Some taxa have evolved mechanisms for avoiding or tolerating elevated soil salinity, which can be modulated by the environment experienced by parents or offspring. We tested the contribution of the parental and offspring environments on salinity adaptation and their potential underlying mechanisms. In a two-generation greenhouse experiment, we factorially manipulated salinity concentrations for genotypes of Medicago truncatula …

Farmer Perceptions Of Climate Change Risk And Associated On-Farm Management Strategies In Vermont, Northeastern United States, Rachel E. Schattman, David Conner, V. Ernesto Méndez

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Little research has been conducted on how agricultural producers in the northeastern United States conceptualize climate-related risk and how these farmers address risk through on-farm management strategies. Two years following Tropical Storm Irene, our team interviewed 15 farmers in order to investigate their perceptions of climate-related risk and how their decision-making was influenced by these perceptions. Our results show that Vermont farmers are concerned with both ecological and economic risk. Subthemes that emerged included geographic, topographic, and hydrological characteristics of farm sites; stability of land tenure; hydrological erosion; pest and disease pressure; market access; household financial stability; and floods. Farmers …

An Interprofessional End Of Life Simulation Using A Movie/Discussion Format, Mary Val Palumbo, Christina S. Melvin, Nancy P. Lemieux, Deborah A. O'Rourke, Jean Beatson, Patricia A. Prelock, Kelly A. Melekis, Mary Alice Favro, Vicki Hart

College of Nursing and Health Sciences Faculty Publications

An Interprofessional End of Life Simulation Using a Movie/Discussion Format

Sigma Theta Tau International Nursing Research Congress

Cape Town, South Africa

July 25, 2016

Mary Val Palumbo, DNP, MSN, BS, APRN, GNP-BC¹ Christina S. Melvin, MS, BS, PHCNS, BC, CHPN¹ Nancy P. LeMieux, MSN, BSEd, RN¹ Deborah A. O'Rouke, PhD, MA, MClSc, BSc, PT² Jean Beatson, EdD, MS, RN³ Patricia A. Prelock, PhD, MA, BS, CCC-SLP, BCS-CL⁴ Kelly A. Melekis, PhD, MSW, LMSW⁵ Mary Alice Favro, MA, BS, CCC-SLP⁶ Vicki Hart, PhD⁷ (1)Department of Nursing, University of Vermont, Burlington, VT (2)Dept. …

Mixed Methods Research In Lis Literature: A Scoping Review, Emily A. Crist, Elizabeth A. Berman

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

This poster presentation introduces the initial stages of a scoping review, mapping the existing mixed methods research (MMR) studies in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) published between 2013-2015. While MMR has no universal definition, it can generally be defined as a mixing of qualitative and quantitative research methods or analytic techniques in a single study (Creswell, 2010). Mixed methods offers a third research paradigm, which aligns more closely with the pragmatic approach being adopted by research which focuses on the research question driving the methods, and not the inclinations of the researcher (Onwuegbuzie & Leech, 2005; Small, …

How To Prevent Your Flip From Flopping: Five Key Mistakes To Avoid When Switching To The Flipped Classroom Model, Gary S. Atwood

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Contrary to popular perception, successfully adopting the flipped (or inverted) classroom model requires more than just recording videos of lectures for students to watch outside of class. This poster will highlight five key mistakes that teachers sometimes make when adopting the flipped classroom model, and outlines effective strategies to avoid them.