Digital Commons Network^™

Forging New Library Connections Between Vermont And Peru, Fred C. Pond, Laurie Kutner, Mara Saule

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

Researchers at the University of Vermont in Burlington, Vermont (UVM) and the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru in Lima, Peru (PUCP) have built extended collaborative relationships based on an umbrella affiliation agreement between the two institutions. Originally centered on health technology and instrumentation, the relationship soon expanded to include partnerships in science and engineering, public administration and, most recently, in library collaboration. In September 2015, three of us from the UVM Libraries travelled to PUCP for a week to strengthen library connections between our universities. In order to understand the PUCP research context and the role of librarians at the …

Identifying Missing Dictionary Entries With Frequency-Conserving Context Models, Jake Ryland Williams, Eric M. Clark, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

In an effort to better understand meaning from natural language texts, we explore methods aimed at organizing lexical objects into contexts. A number of these methods for organization fall into a family defined by word ordering. Unlike demographic or spatial partitions of data, these collocation models are of special importance for their universal applicability. While we are interested here in text and have framed our treatment appropriately, our work is potentially applicable to other areas of research (e.g., speech, genomics, and mobility patterns) where one has ordered categorical data (e.g., sounds, genes, and locations). Our approach focuses on the phrase …

Characterizing The Google Books Corpus: Strong Limits To Inferences Of Socio-Cultural And Linguistic Evolution, Eitan Adam Pechenick, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

It is tempting to treat frequency trends from the Google Books data sets as indicators of the "true" popularity of various words and phrases. Doing so allows us to draw quantitatively strong conclusions about the evolution of cultural perception of a given topic, such as time or gender. However, the Google Books corpus suffers from a number of limitations which make it an obscure mask of cultural popularity. A primary issue is that the corpus is in effect a library, containing one of each book. A single, prolific author is thereby able to noticeably insert new phrases into the Google …

Effects Of Skeletal Streetscape Design On Perceived Safety, Chester Harvey, Lisa Aultman-Hall, Stephanie E. Hurley, Austin Troy

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

It is important for planners and urban designers to understand how physical characteristics of urban streetscapes contribute to perceptions of them as safe, comfortable urban spaces. While urban design theory offers numerous suggestions for successful streetscapes there is meager empirical evidence of their effects. We suggest that this is largely due to precision and sample size limitations on audit-based physical design and human perception measurements. This paper overcomes these limitations by identifying a key set of "streetscape skeleton" design variables that can be efficiently measured using a GIS-based method. It then measures these variables on a large and diverse sample …

If You've Seen One Worm, Have You Seen Them All? Spatial, Community, And Genetic Variability Of Tubificid Communities In Montana, Nilanjan Lodh, Donna M. Rizzo, Billie L. Kerans, Stephanie Mcginnis, Nikolaos Fytilis, Lori Stevens

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Genetic studies are recognized increasingly as important for understanding naturally occurring disease dynamics and are used to predict host genetic diversity and coevolutionary processes and to identify species composition in ecological communities. Tubifex tubifex, the definitive host of the whirling disease parasite Myxobolus cerebralis, comprises 6 known lineages that vary widely in parasite susceptibility. We used 16S ribosomal DNA (16S rDNA) to identify relationships among genetic variability of 3 oligochaete genera (T. tubifex, Rhyacodrilus spp., and Ilyodrilus spp.; Oligochaeta:Tubificidae), oligochaete assemblage composition, and the presence of whirling disease in 9 locations across 4 watersheds in Montana, USA. We assessed genetic …

Climate Change Sentiment On Twitter: An Unsolicited Public Opinion Poll, Emily M. Cody, Andrew J. Reagan, Lewis Mitchell, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

The consequences of anthropogenic climate change are extensively debated through scientific papers, newspaper articles, and blogs. Newspaper articles may lack accuracy, while the severity of findings in scientific papers may be too opaque for the public to understand. Social media, however, is a forum where individuals of diverse backgrounds can share their thoughts and opinions. As consumption shifts from old media to new, Twitter has become a valuable resource for analyzing current events and headline news. In this research, we analyze tweets containing the word "climate" collected between September 2008 and July 2014. Through use of a previously developed sentiment …

Not Your Mother's Library Orientation, Gary S. Atwood, Nancy A. Bianchi

UVM Libraries Conference Day

This presentation outlines how the authors transformed a traditional orientation for new University of Vermont Medical Center residents into a more active learning experience. Specifically, it describes how they focused on making connections between what the residents already knew, or what they wanted to know, about libraries and the resources and services available at Dana Medical Library.

A Summer Migration: How We Moved Our Research Guides To A New Website, Graham Sherriff

UVM Libraries Conference Day

In spring 2015, liaison librarians at the University of Vermont’s Bailey/Howe and Dana Medical Libraries migrated their online research guides to the LibGuides v2 platform, moving more than 600 guides to a new site. Librarian Graham Sherriff, who coordinated the Working Group that oversaw the migration, describes the goals, challenges and outcomes of a major data migration project.

What's The Deal With Data? Understanding Research Data Management & Support At Uvm, Elizabeth A. Berman

UVM Libraries Conference Day

In 2011, the National Science Foundation (NSF) began requiring that researchers submit two-page data management plans (DMPs) with their grant applications in order to demonstrate how they will preserve and provide long-term access to federally-funded research data. In 2013, the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy (OSTP) issued a memorandum that requires all granting agencies to develop a plan to make both the data and published articles of federally-funded research publicly available, free of charge. These policies directly impact the University of Vermont: in FY 2014, UVM received 615 grants and contracts amounting to $128 million, 70% of …

Zipfs Law Holds For Phrases, Not Words, Jake Ryland Williams, Paul R. Lessard, Suma Desu, Eric M. Clark, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

With Zipfs law being originally and most famously observed for word frequency, it is surprisingly limited in its applicability to human language, holding over no more than three to four orders of magnitude before hitting a clear break in scaling. Here, building on the simple observation that phrases of one or more words comprise the most coherent units of meaning in language, we show empirically that Zipfs law for phrases extends over as many as nine orders of rank magnitude. In doing so, we develop a principled and scalable statistical mechanical method of random text partitioning, which opens up a …

Impacts Of Community-Based Natural Resource Management On Wealth, Food Security And Child Health In Tanzania, Sharon Pailler, Robin Naidoo, Neil D. Burgess, Olivia E. Freeman, Brendan Fisher

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) is a major global strategy for enhancing conservation outcomes while also seeking to improve rural livelihoods; however, little evidence of socioeconomic outcomes exists. We present a national-level analysis that empirically estimates socioeconomic impacts of CBNRM across Tanzania, while systematically controlling for potential sources of bias. Specifically, we apply a difference-indifferences model to national-scale, cross-sectional data to estimate the impact of three different CBNRM governance regimes on wealth, food security and child health, considering differential impacts of CBNRM on wealthy and poor populations. We also explore whether or not longer-standing CBNRM efforts provide more benefits than …

Notes From The Field: Lessons Learned From Using Ecosystem Service Approaches To Inform Real-World Decisions, Mary Ruckelshaus, Emily Mckenzie, Heather Tallis, Anne Guerry, Gretchen Daily, Peter Kareiva, Stephen Polasky, Taylor Ricketts, Nirmal Bhagabati, Spencer A. Wood, Joanna Bernhardt

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

While there have been rapid advances in assessments of biodiversity and ecosystem services (BES), a critical remaining challenge is how to move from scientific knowledge to real-world decision making. We offer 6 lessons from our experiences applying new approaches and tools for quantifying BES in 20 pilot demonstrations: (1) Applying a BES approach is most effective in leading to policy change as part of an iterative science-policy process; (2) simple ecological production function models have been useful in a diverse set of decision contexts, across a broad range of biophysical, social, and governance systems. Key limitations of simple models arise …

Barriers And Opportunities To Promote Rights To Sustainable Production Of Smallholders In The Context Of Climate Stresses In Central America, Raffaele Vignola

Food Systems Summit 2015

Under a systemic approach, right to food implies also considering two aspects such as the implementation of and correspondent support to sustainable agricultural production by smallholders. Given the observed and projected trends, this requires also considering how such practices can help these vulnerable producers cope with and recover from the increasing climate stresses affecting them. We here focus on these two complementary aspects for the case of coffee and basic grains smallholders: the identification of adaptive benefits of sustainable practices and the barriers and strengths of cross-scale governance to support their implementation in Central America (a highly climate-vulnerable region).

Gender, Nutrition, And The Human Right To Adequate Food: Toward An Inclusive Framework, Anne C. Bellows

Food Systems Summit 2015

The food crisis of 2008 was not an isolated incident or unique event from which the world economy and food security has re-stabilized. Rather, as Valente and Suárez Franco (2010, 455) state, "[the 2008 food crisis] is not new for more than 840 million people who have constantly been subjected to hunger over the last thirty years, millions of whom died of malnutrition and associated diseases, or had their quality of life severely affected by the consequences of malnutrition." Although estimates of food insecurity differ, the geography and socio-demographic profile of the food insecure remains unaltered (FAO, WFP, IFAD 2012; …

Basic Grain Storage And Distribution Center As A Food Security And Food Sovereignty Strategy For Coffee-Growing Communities In Nicaragua, Marcela Pino

Food Systems Summit 2015

No abstract provided.

Does The Human Right To Food Include An Implicit Right To A Healthy Environment?, Anastasia Telesetsky

Food Systems Summit 2015

The United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights defines the human right to food as "the right to have regular, permanent and unrestricted access, either directly or by means of financial purchases, to quantitatively and qualitatively adequate and sufficient food corresponding to the cultural traditions of the people to which the consumer belongs, and which ensure a physical and mental, individual and collective, fulfilling and dignified life free of fear." Notably, this definition provides no explicit mention of the environment. The General Comment on the Right to Food by the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and …

Realizing The Right To Food: Progress, Limitations And Emerging Alternative Policy And Legal Models, Nadia Lambek

Food Systems Summit 2015

No abstract provided.

New England's Food Vision: 50% By 2060 -- Biophysical Opportunities & Constraints, Ellen Kahler

Food Systems Summit 2015

Vermont's Farm to Plate Initiative is recognized as a national leader in food systems development activity. The initiative was originally created by act of the Vermont Legislature in 2009, which directed the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, in collaboration with a wide array of stakeholders, to develop a 10 year strategic plan to increase jobs and economic activity in the farm and food sector and to increase access to healthy, local food for all Vermonters.

Cultivating The Right To Food? The Contribution Of Urban Community Food Gardens To Food Sovereignty In Johannesburg, South Africa, Brittany Kesselman

Food Systems Summit 2015

This proposal presents on-going research towards a PhD in Development Studies. The objective of this research is to understand if and how urban community gardens contribute to food sovereignty in Johannesburg, South Africa, with the aim of determining what actions can be taken to enhance their contribution.

The research examines the way in which urban community gardens contribute to six key elements of food sovereignty, namely: Access to adequate, nutritious, culturally appropriate foods; Sustainable income/ livelihoods; Localisation as well as democratisation of the food system; Environmental sustainability of the food system; Empowerment of marginalised groups; and Empowerment of women/ promotion …

The Vermont Youth Conservation Corps Health Care Share: An Immunization For The Future, Paul Feenan

Food Systems Summit 2015

In 2012, The Farm at VYCC partnered with Central Vermont Medical Center (CVMC) to pilot the Health Care Share (HCS), a food security initiative that provides farm fresh produce and poultry to families in need. In 2013, the University of Vermont Medical Center (then Fletcher Allen Health Care), joined the program. Medical providers identify patient and employee families who are unable to afford or access fresh, nutritious food. Families enrolled in the HCS receive a weekly allotment of fresh produce, information on food storage and preparation, and increased access to nutritional counseling.

The HCS relies on a constellation of local …

Food Safety Education And Disparities In North Carolina Emergency Food, Ashley Chaifetz, Benjamin Chapman

Food Systems Summit 2015

Each year, an estimated 48 million Americans (1 in 6) contract foodborne illness (Scallan, 2011) stemming from grocery stores, hospitals, day care centers, church banquets, county fairs, restaurants, private homes, schools, and even food banks (CDC FOOD, 2011). However, little research has explored the potential connection between food-insecure populations and risk of foodborne illness, especially for emergency foods (c.f. Henley et al., 2012; Koro et al., 2010; Quinlan, 2013). For the majority of people who seek food assistance, food pantries are a fixed part of food sources; that is, the pantries are for subsistence and no longer just “emergency food” …

Reply To Garcia Et Al.: Common Mistakes In Measuring Frequency-Dependent Word Characteristics, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Eric M. Clark, Suma Desu, Morgan R. Frank, Andrew J. Reagan, Jake Ryland Williams, Lewis Mitchell, Kameron Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, James P. Bagrow, Karine Megerdoomian, Matthew T. Mcmahon, Brian F. Tivnan, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Text Mixing Shapes The Anatomy Of Rank-Frequency Distributions, Jake Ryland Williams, James P. Bagrow, Christopher M. Danforth, Peter Sheridan Dodds

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Natural languages are full of rules and exceptions. One of the most famous quantitative rules is Zipf's law, which states that the frequency of occurrence of a word is approximately inversely proportional to its rank. Though this "law" of ranks has been found to hold across disparate texts and forms of data, analyses of increasingly large corpora since the late 1990s have revealed the existence of two scaling regimes. These regimes have thus far been explained by a hypothesis suggesting a separability of languages into core and noncore lexica. Here we present and defend an alternative hypothesis that the two …

What Can Guide On The Side Do For Your Library?, Daisy S. Benson, Daniel Desanto, Graham Sherriff

University Libraries Faculty and Staff Publications

UVM is in their second year using this free software that can lead users through interactive tutorial experiences. Come learn about this software and the UVM Libraries’ experiences!

Robustness Of Spatial Micronetworks, Thomas C. Mcandrew, Christopher M. Danforth, James P. Bagrow

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Power lines, roadways, pipelines, and other physical infrastructure are critical to modern society. These structures may be viewed as spatial networks where geographic distances play a role in the functionality and construction cost of links. Traditionally, studies of network robustness have primarily considered the connectedness of large, random networks. Yet for spatial infrastructure, physical distances must also play a role in network robustness. Understanding the robustness of small spatial networks is particularly important with the increasing interest in microgrids, i.e., small-area distributed power grids that are well suited to using renewable energy resources. We study the random failures of links …

Participation And Contribution In Crowdsourced Surveys, Robert Swain, Alex Berger, Josh Bongard, Paul Hines

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

This paper identifies trends within and relationships between the amount of participation and the quality of contributions in three crowdsourced surveys. Participants were asked to perform a collective problem solving task that lacked any explicit incentive: they were instructed not only to respond to survey questions but also to pose new questions that they thought might-if responded to by others-predict an outcome variable of interest to them. While the three surveys had very different outcome variables, target audiences, methods of advertisement, and lengths of deployment, we found very similar patterns of collective behavior. In particular, we found that: the rate …

Nutrition-Related Policy And Environmental Strategies To Prevent Obesity In Rural Communities: A Systematic Review Of The Literature, 2002-2013, Larissa Calancie, Jennifer Leeman, Stephanie B. Jilcott Pitts, Laura Kettel Khan, Sheila Fleischhacker, R. Evenson Kelly, Michelle Schreiner, Carmen Byker, Clint Owens, Jared Mcguirt, Ellen Barnidge, Wesley Dean, Donna Johnson, Jane Kolodinsky, Emily Piltch, Courtney Pinard, Emilee Quinn, Lauren Whetstone, Alice Ammerman

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

Introduction Residents of rural communities in the United States are at higher risk for obesity than their urban and suburban counterparts. Policy and environmental-change strategies supporting healthier dietary intake can prevent obesity and promote health equity. Evidence in support of these strategies is based largely on urban and suburban studies; little is known about use of these strategies in rural communities. The purpose of this review was to synthesize available evidence on the adaptation, implementation, and effectiveness of policy and environmental obesity-prevention strategies in rural settings. Methods The review was guided by a list of Centers for Disease Control and …

Human Language Reveals A Universal Positivity Bias, Peter Sheridan Dodds, Eric M. Clark, Suma Desu, Morgan R. Frank, Andrew J. Reagan, Jake Ryland Williams, Lewis Mitchell, Kameron Decker Harris, Isabel M. Kloumann, James P. Bagrow, Karine Megerdoomian, Matthew T. Mcmahon, Brian F. Tivnan, Christopher M. Danforth

College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences Faculty Publications

Using human evaluation of 100,000 words spread across 24 corpora in 10 languages diverse in origin and culture, we present evidence of a deep imprint of human sociality in language, observing that (i ) the words of natural human language possess a universal positivity bias, (ii ) the estimated emotional content of words is consistent between languages under translation, and (iii ) this positivity bias is strongly independent of frequency of word use. Alongside these general regularities, we describe interlanguage variations in the emotional spectrum of languages that allow us to rank corpora. We also show how our word evaluations …

Do Pollinators Contribute To Nutritional Health?, Alicia M. Ellis, Samuel S. Myers, Taylor H. Ricketts

Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources Faculty Publications

Despite suggestions that animal pollinators are crucial for human nutritional health, no studies have actually tested this claim. Here, we combined data on crop pollination requirements, food nutrient densities, and actual human diets to predict the effects of pollinator losses on the risk of nutrient deficiency. In four developing countries and across five nutrients, we found that 0 to 56% of populations would become newly at risk if pollinators were removed. Increases in risk were most pronounced for vitamin A in populations with moderate levels of total nutrient intake. Overall, the effects of pollinator decline varied widely among populations and …

Mainstreaming Early Warning Systems In Development And Planning Processes: Multilevel Implementation Of Sendai Framework In Indus And Sahel, Asim Zia, Courtney Hammond Wagner

College of Agriculture and Life Sciences Faculty Publications

The third UN World Congress on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Sendai, Japan in March 2015, agreed on a new framework to guide disaster risk reduction policy and practice for the next 15 years. The Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015–2030 (SFDRR) leaves important implementation issues unspecified and potentially creates both problems and opportunities for complex, multilevel governance systems in coping with hazards and disastrous events. Early warning systems (EWS), if built into the mainstream of planning for development and disaster relief and recovery, could present a significant opportunity to realize many SFDRR goals. We explore the complexities of …