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Articles 391 - 420 of 433

Full-Text Articles in Human Ecology

Ecosystem Services: The Economics Debate, Joshua Farley Jul 2012

Ecosystem Services: The Economics Debate, Joshua Farley

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The goal of this paper is to illuminate the debate concerning the economics of ecosystem services. The sustainability debate focuses on whether or not ecosystem services are essential for human welfare and the existence of ecological thresholds. If ecosystem services are essential, then marginal analysis and monetary valuation are inappropriate tools in the vicinity of thresholds. The justice debate focuses on who is entitled to ecosystem services and the ecosystem structure that generates them. Answers to these questions have profound implications for the choice of suitable economic institutions. The efficiency debate concerns both the goals of economic activity and the …

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Early Developmental Responses To Seedling Environment Modulate Later Plasticity To Light Spectral Quality, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg, John R. Stinchcombe, Johanna Schmitt Mar 2012

Early Developmental Responses To Seedling Environment Modulate Later Plasticity To Light Spectral Quality, Eric J.B. Von Wettberg, John R. Stinchcombe, Johanna Schmitt

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Correlations between developmentally plastic traits may constrain the joint evolution of traits. In plants, both seedling de-etiolation and shade avoidance elongation responses to crowding and foliage shade are mediated by partially overlapping developmental pathways, suggesting the possibility of pleiotropic constraints. To test for such constraints, we exposed inbred lines of Impatiens capensis to factorial combinations of leaf litter (which affects de-etiolation) and simulated foliage shade (which affects phytochrome-mediated shade avoidance). Increased elongation of hypocotyls caused by leaf litter phenotypically enhanced subsequent elongation of the first internode in response to low red:far red (R:FR). Trait expression was correlated across litter and …

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Defining The Boundaries Of Normal Thrombin Generation: Investigations Into Hemostasis, Christopher M. Danforth, Thomas Orfeo, Stephen J. Everse, Kenneth G. Mann, Kathleen E. Brummel-Ziedins Feb 2012

Defining The Boundaries Of Normal Thrombin Generation: Investigations Into Hemostasis, Christopher M. Danforth, Thomas Orfeo, Stephen J. Everse, Kenneth G. Mann, Kathleen E. Brummel-Ziedins

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

In terms of its soluble precursors, the coagulation proteome varies quantitatively among apparently healthy individuals. The significance of this variability remains obscure, in part because it is the backdrop against which the hemostatic consequences of more dramatic composition differences are studied. In this study we have defined the consequences of normal range variation of components of the coagulation proteome by using a mechanism-based computational approach that translates coagulation factor concentration data into a representation of an individual's thrombin generation potential. A novel graphical method is used to integrate standard measures that characterize thrombin generation in both empirical and computational models …

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Positivity Of The English Language, Isabel M. Kloumann, Christopher M. Danforth, Kameron Decker Harris, Catherine A. Bliss, Peter Sheridan Dodds Jan 2012

Positivity Of The English Language, Isabel M. Kloumann, Christopher M. Danforth, Kameron Decker Harris, Catherine A. Bliss, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Over the last million years, human language has emerged and evolved as a fundamental instrument of social communication and semiotic representation. People use language in part to convey emotional information, leading to the central and contingent questions: (1) What is the emotional spectrum of natural language? and (2) Are natural languages neutrally, positively, or negatively biased? Here, we report that the human-perceived positivity of over 10,000 of the most frequently used English words exhibits a clear positive bias. More deeply, we characterize and quantify distributions of word positivity for four large and distinct corpora, demonstrating that their form is broadly …

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Conservation And Livelihoods: Identifying Trade-Offs And Win-Wins, Brendan P. Fisher Jan 2012

Conservation And Livelihoods: Identifying Trade-Offs And Win-Wins, Brendan P. Fisher

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Temporal Patterns Of Happiness And Information In A Global Social Network: Hedonometrics And Twitter, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Kameroncker Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, Catherine A. Bliss, Christopher M. Danforth Dec 2011

Temporal Patterns Of Happiness And Information In A Global Social Network: Hedonometrics And Twitter, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Kameroncker Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, Catherine A. Bliss, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Individual happiness is a fundamental societal metric. Normally measured through self-report, happiness has often been indirectly characterized and overshadowed by more readily quantifiable economic indicators such as gross domestic product. Here, we examine expressions made on the online, global microblog and social networking service Twitter, uncovering and explaining temporal variations in happiness and information levels over timescales ranging from hours to years. Our data set comprises over 46 billion words contained in nearly 4.6 billion expressions posted over a 33 month span by over 63 million unique users. In measuring happiness, we construct a tunable, real-time, remote-sensing, and non-invasive, text-based …

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Randomization Tests For Quantifying Species Importance To Ecosystem Function, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Werner Ulrich, Fernando T. Maestre Dec 2011

Randomization Tests For Quantifying Species Importance To Ecosystem Function, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Werner Ulrich, Fernando T. Maestre

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

1. Quantifying the contribution of different species to ecosystem function is an important challenge. We introduce simple randomization tests (and software) for quantifying the average effect of species on ecosystem variables measured in multiple plots with and without the presence of a particular species. These randomization tests formalize the analysis of uncontrolled 'natural experiments' and quantify species effects in standardized deviation units. 2.We tested the method with data on ecosystem function in biological soil crust assemblages of lichens in semi-arid gypsum outcrops in central Spain. In sixty-three 50cm×50cm sample plots, we measured the presence and percentage cover of 17 species …

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Underestimating The Costs Of Conservation In Southeast Asia, David P. Edwards, Brendan Fisher, Xingli Giam, David S. Wilcove Dec 2011

Underestimating The Costs Of Conservation In Southeast Asia, David P. Edwards, Brendan Fisher, Xingli Giam, David S. Wilcove

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

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Time Use And Food Pattern Influences On Obesity, Jane M. Kolodinsky, Amanda B. Goldstein Dec 2011

Time Use And Food Pattern Influences On Obesity, Jane M. Kolodinsky, Amanda B. Goldstein

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The rise of obesity in the United States over the past 25 years has resulted in an increase in the number of research studies published related to the causes, consequences, and possible solutions to the problem. Most would agree that obesity is a multi-dimensional problem that requires a range of solutions related to individual diet and activity, food and built environment, and public policy. Examination of complex relationships between food choice, time use patterns, sociodemographic characteristics and obesity has been limited by data availability and disciplinary focus. Using the theory of the production of health capital, this paper links empirical …

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The Limits To Prediction In Ecological Systems, Brian Beckage, Louis J. Gross, Stuart Kauffman Nov 2011

The Limits To Prediction In Ecological Systems, Brian Beckage, Louis J. Gross, Stuart Kauffman

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Predicting the future trajectories of ecological systems is increasingly important as the magnitude of anthropogenic perturbation of the earth systems grows.We distinguish between two types of predictability: the intrinsic or theoretical predictability of a system and the realized predictability that is achieved using available models and parameterizations. We contend that there are strong limits on the intrinsic predictability of ecological systems that arise from inherent characteristics of biological systems. While the realized predictability of ecological systems can be limited by process and parameter misspecification or uncertainty, we argue that the intrinsic predictability of ecological systems is widely and strongly limited …

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Heating Up The Forest: Open-Top Chamber Warming Manipulation Of Arthropod Communities At Harvard And Duke Forests, Shannon L. Pelini, Francis P. Bowles, Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn Oct 2011

Heating Up The Forest: Open-Top Chamber Warming Manipulation Of Arthropod Communities At Harvard And Duke Forests, Shannon L. Pelini, Francis P. Bowles, Aaron M. Ellison, Nicholas J. Gotelli, Nathan J. Sanders, Robert R. Dunn

College of Arts and Sciences Faculty Publications

1.Recent observations indicate that climatic change is altering biodiversity, and models suggest that the consequences of climate change will differ across latitude. However, long-term experimental field manipulations that directly test the predictions about organisms' responses to climate change across latitude are lacking. Such experiments could provide a more mechanistic understanding of the consequences of climate change on ecological communities and subsequent changes in ecosystem processes, facilitating better predictions of the effects of future climate change. 2.This field experiment uses octagonal, 5-m-diameter (c.22m 3) open-top chambers to simulate warming at northern (Harvard Forest, Massachusetts) and southern (Duke Forest, North Carolina) hardwood …

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A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, Christopher Donoghue, David Brandwein Sep 2011

A Multicultural Grassroots Effort To Reduce Ethnic And Racial Social Distance Among Middle School Students, Christopher Donoghue, David Brandwein

Department of Sociology Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

Raising tolerance for people of different ethnic and racial groups is the goal of the Multicultural Mosaic program, a grass-roots multicultural education effort initiated by a small group of middle school teachers in a private school in the northeast. After years of enjoying the comforts of a modern, but European-based, curriculum, these teachers took the initiative to pursue an ambitious transformation of their entire school's approach to pedagogy. Not only would the English teachers introduce new texts by foreign authors and the social studies teachers introduce new materials on the history of non-Western cultures, but also the teachers of mathematics …

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The High Costs Of Conserving Southeast Asia's Lowland Rainforests, Brendan Fisher, David P. Edwards, Xingli Giam, David S. Wilcove Aug 2011

The High Costs Of Conserving Southeast Asia's Lowland Rainforests, Brendan Fisher, David P. Edwards, Xingli Giam, David S. Wilcove

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Mechanisms that mitigate greenhouse-gas emissions via forest conservation have been portrayed as a cost-effective approach that can also protect biodiversity and vital ecosystem services. However, the costs of conservation - including opportunity costs - are spatially heterogeneous across the globe. The lowland rainforests of Southeast Asia represent a unique nexus of large carbon stores, imperiled biodiversity, large stores of timber, and high potential for conversion to oil-palm plantations, making this region one where understanding the costs of conservation is critical. Previous studies have underestimated the gap between conservation costs and conversion benefits in Southeast Asia. Using detailed logging records, cost …

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Subsurface Characterization Of Groundwater Contaminated By Landfill Leachate Using Microbial Community Profile Data And A Nonparametric Decision-Making Process, Andrea R. Pearce, Donna M. Rizzo, Paula J. Mouser Jun 2011

Subsurface Characterization Of Groundwater Contaminated By Landfill Leachate Using Microbial Community Profile Data And A Nonparametric Decision-Making Process, Andrea R. Pearce, Donna M. Rizzo, Paula J. Mouser

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Microbial biodiversity in groundwater and soil presents a unique opportunity for improving characterization and monitoring at sites with multiple contaminants, yet few computational methods use or incorporate these data because of their high dimensionality and variability. We present a systematic, nonparametric decision-making methodology to help characterize a water quality gradient in leachate-contaminated groundwater using only microbiological data for input. The data-driven methodology is based on clustering a set of molecular genetic-based microbial community profiles. Microbes were sampled from groundwater monitoring wells located within and around an aquifer contaminated with landfill leachate. We modified a self-organizing map (SOM) to weight the …

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Governance Informatics: Managing The Performance Of Inter-Organizational Governance Networks, Christopher Koliba, Asim Zia, Brian H.Y. Lee May 2011

Governance Informatics: Managing The Performance Of Inter-Organizational Governance Networks, Christopher Koliba, Asim Zia, Brian H.Y. Lee

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

This article introduces an informatics approach to managing the performance of inter-organizational governance networks that are designed to create, implement and evaluate public policies and the range of activities undertaken by practicing public administrators. We label this type of information flow process management "governance informatics" and lay out a range of theoretical constructs that may be used to collect, categorize, and analyze performance in inter-organizational governance networks. We discuss how governance informatics may be able to assess and re-design the accountability and transparency regimes of information flows in inter-organizational governance networks. The integration of a governance informatics-driven performance management system …

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Larvicidal Effects Of Chinaberry (Melia Azederach) Powder On Anopheles Arabiensis In Ethiopia, Ryan E. Trudel, Arne Bomblies May 2011

Larvicidal Effects Of Chinaberry (Melia Azederach) Powder On Anopheles Arabiensis In Ethiopia, Ryan E. Trudel, Arne Bomblies

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Synthetic insecticides are employed in the widely-used currently favored malaria control techniques involving indoor residual spraying and treated bednets. These methods have repeatedly proven to be highly effective at reducing malaria incidence and prevalence. However, rapidly emerging mosquito resistance to the chemicals and logistical problems in transporting supplies to remote locations threaten the long-term sustainability of these techniques. Chinaberry (Melia azederach) extracts have been shown to be effective growth-inhibiting larvicides against several insects. Because several active chemicals in the trees' seeds have insecticidal properties, the emergence of resistance is unlikely. Here, we investigate the feasibility of Chinaberry as a …

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Scientific Instruments For Climate Change Adaptation: Estimating And Optimizing The Efficiency Of Ecosystem Service Provision, Ferdinando Villa, Ken Bagstad, Gary Johnson, Brian Voigt Jan 2011

Scientific Instruments For Climate Change Adaptation: Estimating And Optimizing The Efficiency Of Ecosystem Service Provision, Ferdinando Villa, Ken Bagstad, Gary Johnson, Brian Voigt

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Adaptation to the consequences of climate change can depend on efficient use of ecosystem services (ES), i.e. a better use of natural services through management of the way in which they are delivered to society. While much discussion focuses on reducing consumption and increasing production of services, a lack of scientific instruments has so far prevented other mechanisms to improve ecosystem services efficiency from being addressed systematically as an adaptation strategy. This paper describes new methodologies for assessing ecosystem services and quantifying their values to humans, highlighting the role of ecosystem service flow analysis in optimizing the efficiency of ES …

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Incorporating Systems Thinking And Sustainability Within Civil And Environmental Engineering Curricula At Uvm, Nancy J. Hayden, Donna M. Rizzo, Mandar M. Dewoolkar, Lalita Oka, Maureen Neumann Jan 2011

Incorporating Systems Thinking And Sustainability Within Civil And Environmental Engineering Curricula At Uvm, Nancy J. Hayden, Donna M. Rizzo, Mandar M. Dewoolkar, Lalita Oka, Maureen Neumann

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

As part of an NSF Department Level Reform (DLR) grant, the civil and environmental engineering programs at the University of Vermont (UVM) incorporated systems thinking and a systems approach to engineering problem solving within their programs. A systems thinking approach regards social, environmental and economic factors as necessary components of the problem solution. Because it is a whole systems approach it also encompasses sustainability. We have integrated systems thinking in the following ways; 1) new material has been included into key courses (e.g. the first-year introductory and senior design courses), 2) a sequence of three related environmental and transportation systems …

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Cross-Scale Value Trade-Offs In Managing Social-Ecological Systems: The Politics Of Scale In Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, Asim Zia, Paul Hirsch, Alexander Songorwa, David R. Mutekanga, Sheila O'Connor, Thomas Mcshane, Peter Brosius, Bryan Norton Jan 2011

Cross-Scale Value Trade-Offs In Managing Social-Ecological Systems: The Politics Of Scale In Ruaha National Park, Tanzania, Asim Zia, Paul Hirsch, Alexander Songorwa, David R. Mutekanga, Sheila O'Connor, Thomas Mcshane, Peter Brosius, Bryan Norton

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Management of social-ecological systems takes place amidst complex governance processes and cross-scale institutional arrangements that are mediated through politics of scale. Each management scenario generates distinct cross-scale trade-offs in the distribution of pluralistic values. This study explores the hypothesis that conservation-oriented management scenarios generate higher value for international and national scale social organizations, whereas mixed or more balanced management scenarios generate higher value for local scale social organizations. This hypothesis is explored in the management context of Ruaha National Park (RNP), Tanzania, especially the 2006 expansion of RNP that led to the eviction of many pastoralists and farmers. Five management …

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Enhanced Detection Of Groundwater Contamination From A Leaking Waste Disposal Site By Microbial Community Profiles, Paula J. Mouser, Donna M. Rizzo, Gregory K. Druschel, Sergio E. Morales, Nancy Hayden, Patrick O'Grady, Lori Stevens Dec 2010

Enhanced Detection Of Groundwater Contamination From A Leaking Waste Disposal Site By Microbial Community Profiles, Paula J. Mouser, Donna M. Rizzo, Gregory K. Druschel, Sergio E. Morales, Nancy Hayden, Patrick O'Grady, Lori Stevens

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Groundwater biogeochemistry is adversely impacted when municipal solid waste leachate, rich in nutrients and anthropogenic compounds, percolates into the subsurface from leaking landfills. Detecting leachate contamination using statistical techniques is challenging because well strategies or analytical techniques may be insufficient for detecting low levels of groundwater contamination. We sampled profiles of the microbial community from monitoring wells surrounding a leaking landfill using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) targeting the 16S rRNA gene. Results show in situ monitoring of bacteria, archaea, and the family Geobacteraceae improves characterization of groundwater quality. Bacterial T-RFLP profiles showed shifts correlated to known gradients of …

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Conclusions About Niche Expansion In Introduced Impatiens Walleriana Populations Depend On Method Of Analysis, Lisa Mandle, Dan L. Warren, Matthias H. Hoffmann, A. Townsend Peterson, Johanna Schmitt, Eric J. Von Wettberg Dec 2010

Conclusions About Niche Expansion In Introduced Impatiens Walleriana Populations Depend On Method Of Analysis, Lisa Mandle, Dan L. Warren, Matthias H. Hoffmann, A. Townsend Peterson, Johanna Schmitt, Eric J. Von Wettberg

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Determining the degree to which climate niches are conserved across plant species' native and introduced ranges is valuable to developing successful strategies to limit the introduction and spread of invasive plants, and also has important ecological and evolutionary implications. Here, we test whether climate niches differ between native and introduced populations of Impatiens walleriana, globally one of the most popular horticultural species. We use approaches based on both raw climate data associated with occurrence points and ecological niche models (ENMs) developed with Maxent. We include comparisons of climate niche breadth in both geographic and environmental spaces, taking into account differences …

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Nutrient Enrichment Enhances Hidden Differences In Phenotype To Drive A Cryptic Plant Invasion, Christine Holdredge, Mark D. Bertness, Eric Von Wettberg, Brian R. Silliman Nov 2010

Nutrient Enrichment Enhances Hidden Differences In Phenotype To Drive A Cryptic Plant Invasion, Christine Holdredge, Mark D. Bertness, Eric Von Wettberg, Brian R. Silliman

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Many mechanisms of invasive species success have been elucidated, but those driving cryptic invasions of non-native genotypes remain least understood. In one of the most successful cryptic plant invasions in North America, we investigate the mechanisms underlying the displacement of native Phragmites australis by its Eurasian counterpart. Since invasive Phragmites' populations have been especially prolific along eutrophic shorelines, we conducted a two-year field experiment involving native and invasive genotypes that manipulated nutrient level and competitor identity (inter- and intra-genotypic competition) to assess their relative importance in driving the loss of native Phragmites. Inter-genotypic competition suppressed aboveground biomass of both native …

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Protecting Degraded Rainforests: Enhancement Of Forest Carbon Stocks Under Redd+, David P. Edwards, Brendan Fisher, Emily Boyd Sep 2010

Protecting Degraded Rainforests: Enhancement Of Forest Carbon Stocks Under Redd+, David P. Edwards, Brendan Fisher, Emily Boyd

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

The likely Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+) mechanism includes strategies for the enhancement of forest carbon stocks. Recent concerns have been expressed that such enhancement, or restoration, of forest carbon could be counterproductive to biodiversity conservation, because forests are managed as "carbon farms" with the application of intensive silvicultural management that could homogenize diverse degraded rainforests. Restoration increases regeneration rates in degraded forest compared to naturally regenerating forest, and thus could yield significant financial returns for carbon sequestered. Here, we argue that such forest restoration projects are, in fact, likely to provide a number of benefits to biodiversity …

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Evolution And Engagement In Sotl: Today, Tomorrow, And Internationally, Cathy Gunn, Gila Kurtz, Karen Lauridson, Trent W. Maurer, Godfrey Steele Jul 2010

Evolution And Engagement In Sotl: Today, Tomorrow, And Internationally, Cathy Gunn, Gila Kurtz, Karen Lauridson, Trent W. Maurer, Godfrey Steele

School of Human Ecology Faculty Publications

This article presents a revision and extension of remarks made by the authors as part of a plenary panel at the 2010 SoTL Commons Conference at Georgia Southern University in Statesboro, Georgia (USA) on the current and future state of SoTL both in their respective countries (New Zealand, Israel, Denmark, the United States, and Trinidad & Tobago) and internationally. We devote special attention to issues and themes that are common across our countries and others

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How Anthocyanin Mutants Respond To Stress: The Need To Distinguish Between Stress Tolerance And Maximal Vigour, Eric J. Von Wettberg, Maureen L. Stanton, Justen B. Whittall May 2010

How Anthocyanin Mutants Respond To Stress: The Need To Distinguish Between Stress Tolerance And Maximal Vigour, Eric J. Von Wettberg, Maureen L. Stanton, Justen B. Whittall

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Background: Anthocyanins are produced by plants in response to diverse stresses. Mutants that block the anthocyanin biosynthetic pathway (ABP) at various steps can easily be compared across numerous abiotic stresses. Hypothesis: Anthocyanins or their precursors are required for stress tolerance. Thus, ABP loss-of-function mutants should have proportionately lower fitness than wildtype plants under stress, compared with benign conditions. In contrast, a decrease in maximal vigour - the general capacity for growth and fecundity - should be most pronounced under benign conditions that allow luxuriant growth by the most vigorous genotypes. Tests: Determine whether, under stressful conditions, ABP loss-of-function mutants have …

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Measuring The Happiness Of Large-Scale Written Expression: Songs, Blogs, And Presidents, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth Jan 2010

Measuring The Happiness Of Large-Scale Written Expression: Songs, Blogs, And Presidents, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

The importance of quantifying the nature and intensity of emotional states at the level of populations is evident: we would like to know how, when, and why individuals feel as they do if we wish, for example, to better construct public policy, build more successful organizations, and, from a scientific perspective, more fully understand economic and social phenomena. Here, by incorporating direct human assessment of words, we quantify happiness levels on a continuous scale for a diverse set of large-scale texts: song titles and lyrics, weblogs, and State of the Union addresses. Our method is transparent, improvable, capable of rapidly …

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An Examination Of The Relationship Between Family And U.S. Latinos’ Physical Health, Georgiana Bostean Jan 2010

An Examination Of The Relationship Between Family And U.S. Latinos’ Physical Health, Georgiana Bostean

Sociology Faculty Articles and Research

Latinos, especially immigrant Latinos, have lower mortality rates and some better health outcomes than U.S.-born Latinos and whites, a situation called the Latino Paradox. One explanation for the advantage is that Latinos’ family orientation protects health. However, because few large-scale studies examine Latinos’ family relationships by nativity, the extent to which family factors contribute to Latinos’ health outcomes is unclear. Additionally, while a large literature focuses on family cohesion, fewer studies address both cohesion and conflict, which may be particularly important among immigrants, whose migration and adaptation experiences can strain family relations. This study examines the relationship between family context …

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Fire Effects On Demography Of The Invasive Shrub Brazilian Pepper (Schinus Terebinthifolius) In Florida Pine Savannas, Jens T. Stevens, Brian Beckage Jan 2010

Fire Effects On Demography Of The Invasive Shrub Brazilian Pepper (Schinus Terebinthifolius) In Florida Pine Savannas, Jens T. Stevens, Brian Beckage

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Fire is a common disturbance in savanna ecosystems that may either facilitate or impede non-native plant invasions. Although fire can create recruitment opportunities for non-native plants, it can also prevent their invasion if it exerts strong negative effects on their demographic processes. Some savannas may, therefore, be able to resist invasion provided the natural, frequent-fire regime remains intact. We examined the effects of fire on the demography of the invasive shrub Brazilian pepper, Schinus terebinthifolius Raddi., which is invading fire-prone slash pine savannas of southern Florida. We studied survivorship, growth, and reproduction of low-density populations of Brazilian pepper in a …

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The Digital Divide In Internet Information Searching: A Double-Hurdle Model Analysis Of Household Data From Vermont, Guangxuan Zhang, Qingbin Wang, Jane Kolodinsky Jan 2010

The Digital Divide In Internet Information Searching: A Double-Hurdle Model Analysis Of Household Data From Vermont, Guangxuan Zhang, Qingbin Wang, Jane Kolodinsky

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

While most studies on the digital divide in the United States focus on disparities in access to computers and the Internet, this study examines the digital divide in Internet information searching. With data from 476 Vermont households surveyed in 2009, a double-hurdle model is used to identify the factors that impact the likelihood and frequency of using the Internet for information searching. Empirical results suggest that there are significant disparities in both the likelihood and frequency of online information searching in Vermont and that these disparities are closely associated with several socioeconomic and demographic factors such as education level, income, …

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Where Concerned Citizens Perceive Police As More Responsive To Troublesome Teen Groups: Theoretical Implications For Political Economy, Incivilities And Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Ralph B. Taylor, Christopher Kelly Aug 2009

Where Concerned Citizens Perceive Police As More Responsive To Troublesome Teen Groups: Theoretical Implications For Political Economy, Incivilities And Policing, Christopher Salvatore, Ralph B. Taylor, Christopher Kelly

Department of Justice Studies Faculty Scholarship and Creative Works

The current investigation extends previous work on citizens' perceptions of police performance. It examines the origins of between-community differences in concerned citizens' judgments that police are responding sufficiently to a local social problem. The problem is local unsupervised teen groups, a key indicator for both the revised systemic social disorganization perspective and the incivilities thesis. Four theoretical perspectives predict ecological determinants of these shared judgments. Less perceived police responsiveness is anticipated in lower socioeconomic status (SES) police districts by both a political economy and a stratified incivilities perspective; more predominantly minority police districts by a racialized justice perspective; and in …

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