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Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook

Sustain Magazine

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic quickly spread from country to country and continent to continent in 2020, governments and scientists needed a way to track COVID-19 through populations in order to position public health interventions in the most impactful locations. Having a decision-based risk framework may help to guide policy creation that could minimize or prevent possible outbreaks and surges of infection within communities. The University of Louisville in partnership with Louisville’s Department of Public Health and Wellness tested this strategy in 2021 and 2022. This Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook describes the decisions and actions of that academic and public …

Using Airborne And Desis Imaging Spectroscopy To Map Plant Diversity Across The Largest Contiguous Tract Of Tallgrass Prairie On Earth, Hamed Gholizadeh, Adam P. Dixon, Kimberly H. Plan, Nicholas A. Mcmillan, Rober G. Hamilton, Samuel D. Fuhlendorf, Jeannine Cavender-Bares, John A. Gamon

School of Natural Resources: Faculty Publications

Grassland ecosystems are under threat globally, primarily due to land-use and land-cover changes that have adversely affected their biodiversity. Given the negative ecological impacts of biodiversity loss in grasslands, there is an urgent need for developing an operational biodiversity monitoring system that functions in these ecosystems. In this paper, we assessed the capability of airborne and spaceborne imaging spectroscopy (also known as hyperspectral imaging) to capture plant α-diversity in a large naturally-assembled grassland while considering the impact of common management practices, specifically prescribed fire. We collected a robust insitu plant diversity data set, including species composition and percent cover from …

Using Unoccupied Aerial Vehicles To Map And Monitor Changes In Emergent Kelp Canopy After An Ecological Regime Shift, Vienna R. Saccomanno, Tom Bell, Camille Pawlak, Charlotte K. Stanley, Katherine C. Cavanaugh, Rietta Hohman, Kirk R. Klausmeyer, Kyle Cavanaugh, Abby Nickels, Waz Hewerdine, Corey Garza, Gary Fleener, Mary Gleason

Marine Science Faculty Publications and Presentations

Kelp forests are complex underwater habitats that form the foundation of many nearshore marine environments and provide valuable services for coastal communities. Despite their ecological and economic importance, increasingly severe stressors have resulted in declines in kelp abundance in many regions over the past few decades, including the North Coast of California, USA. Given the significant and sustained loss of kelp in this region, management intervention is likely a necessary tool to reset the ecosystem and geospatial data on kelp dynamics are needed to strategically implement restoration projects. Because canopy-forming kelp forests are distinguishable in aerial imagery, remote sensing is …

Redefining Progress And The Case For Diversity In Innovation And Inventing, Colleen Chien

Faculty Publications

In the United States, women represent 50% of the workforce, but only 27% of STEM workers and 13% of inventors. This article surveys the scientific literature to make the empirical case for diversity in innovation and inventing, finding a growing body of research to show how diverse innovators expand the reach, quality, and quantity of innovation. It then surveys the history of patent law to make the legal case for prioritizing diversity in inventing, and for expanding conventional notions of “progress” in the patent system to include the promotion of a diverse set of innovators, rather than just innovation. It …

American Indians And Covid-19: Morbidity And Mortality Disparities Among Indigenous Populations In The Rural South, Leslie Musshafen, Thomas E. Dobbs, Aaron Robinson, Thomas Wyatt, Michael Puskarich, Richard Summers, Seth Lirette, Caroline Compretta

Journal of Public Health in the Deep South

Background The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted health inequities among indigenous populations, with those in rural settings facing compounded barriers.Purpose To investigate morbidity and mortality experiences among hospitalized, COVID-19+ American Indian adults from rural and urban settings.Methods The described cross-sectional study used retrospective discharge data from the University of Mississippi Medical Center and Hennepin County Medical Center. Adults (≥ age 18) admitted from January 1, 2020 to August 8, 2021with a COVID-19 diagnosis and known race were included.Results A total of 3,659 inpatients met inclusion criteria. Among adults hospitalized with COVID-19 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, American Indians (n=73) …

How Education On Climate Change Affects Consumers' Willingness To Participate In Carbon Offsetting Programs?, Leila Halawi, Deanna Demattio

Publications

If airlines could have a better understanding of how to induce sustainable behavior in their customers, they can use these methods when building sustainable initiatives such as voluntary carbon offsetting programs. The purpose of the study was to determine if education on the consequences of climate change affects how consumers behave related to their interaction with carbon offsetting programs. Regional Scenarios were introduced with a natural disaster comparable to the region under review. A multistage sampling technique was utilized in this study. Firstly, using a cluster sample, groups were used rather than individual units of the target population. The results …

Strong Margin Influence On The Arctic Ocean Barium Cycle Revealed By Pan‐Arctic Synthesis, Laura M. Whitmore, Alan M. Shiller, Tristan J. Horner, Yang Xiang, Maureen E. Auro, Dorothea Bauch, Frank Dehairs, Phoebe J. Lam, Jingxuan Li, Maria T. Maldonado, Chantal Mears, Robert Newton, Angelica Pasqualini, Hélène Planquette, Robert Rember, Helmuth Thomas

Faculty Publications

Laura M. Whitmore et al, 2022, Strong margin influence on the Arctic Ocean barium cycle revealed by Pan‐Arctic synthesis, Journal of Geophysical Research: Oceans, Citation number, 10.1029/2021JC017417. To view the published open abstract, go to https://doi.org/10.1029/2021JC017417.

Are U.S. Consumers Willing To Pay More By The Lake? An Analysis Of Preferences For Great Lakes Region Fish, April Athnos, Simone Valle De Souza, Kwamena Quagrainie, Chinonso Etumnu, William Knudson, Ronald E. Kinnunen, Paul Hitchens

Department of Agricultural Economics Faculty Publications

U.S. per capita seafood consumption is historically high due to population and income growth and consumer preference shifts toward healthy protein options. Despite this expansion, U.S. fisheries, especially those in the Great Lakes region, no longer fulfill domestic demand due to pressure on fish stocks and regulatory constraints. Instead, aquaculture and imports fill the gap. Rainbow trout, yellow perch, and walleye—three species historically produced in the North Central Region (NCR)—exemplify such trends. To expand marketing opportunities for NCR aquaculture producers, this study estimates willingness to pay (WTP) for these species and several search and credence fish attributes. We designed and …

Availability Of Hospital-Based Cancer Services Before And After Rural Hospital Closure, 2008-2017, Whitney Zahnd Ph.D., Peiyin Hung Ph.D., Sylvia Kewei Shi, Anja Zgodic, Melinda A. Merrell Ph.D., Elizabeth L. Crouch, Janice C. Probst, Jan Eberth Ph.D.

Faculty Publications

Introduction

Rural populations have less access to cancer care services and experience higher cancer mortality rates than their urban counterparts, which may be exacerbated by hospital closures. Our objective was to examine the impact of hospital closures on access to cancer-relevant hospital services across hospital service areas (HSAs).

Methods

We used American Hospital Association survey data from 2008 to 2017 to examine the change in access to cancer-related screening and treatment services across rural HSAs that sustained hospitals over time, experienced any closures, or had all hospitals close. We performed a longitudinal analysis to assess the association between hospital closure …

Predicting International Student Enrollment By Institutional Aid: A Random And Fixed Effects Approach, Daniel C. Posmik

Journal of Student Financial Aid

Since the fall semester of 2016, first-time international student enrollment (ISE_ft) has declined at U.S. colleges and universities. This trend disrupts a steady upwards trajectory of ISE_ft rates. Previous research has demonstrated that various political, social, and macroeconomic factors influence the number of international students studying in the U.S. Exploiting data from the Common Data Set (CDS), I focus on the role financial aid plays as an enrollment predictor for international undergraduate students. A fixed effects model reveals that financial aid is strongly and significantly predictive of ISE_ft, yielding a 1.8% enrollment increase per 10% …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Work On Byu’S Messiah Documentary Continues

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The filming for the Messiah documentary has been completed, and the important work of editing has begun. Team members had traveled to Israel, Egypt, and Denmark to film the visual backdrop for the nine-part film as well as to capture the hosts’ comments that will introduce a wide array of topics in the documentary. Those hosts included Gaye Strathearn (assistant professor of ancient scripture), John Tanner (professor of English), Andrew Skinner (professor of ancient scripture), and Kent Brown (professor emeritus of ancient scripture).

Latest Farms Review Offers Well-Rounded Fare

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The latest incarnation of the FARMS Review (vol. 20, no. 2, 2008) sizes up recent books dealing with evolutionary science, plural marriage, Book of Mormon geography, and even the lost ark of the covenant. It also reviews the latest volume in the Collected Works of Hugh Nibley and introduces a new feature called the Neal A. Maxwell Institute Lecture, which this time features two talks by General Authorities who were guest speakers at the Maxwell Institute’s annual lectures in 2007 and 2008.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Maxwell Institute Well Represented At Fair Conference

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Several scholars associated with the Maxwell Institute spoke at the FAIR conference held in Sandy, Utah, in August. As explained on its Web site (www.fairlds.org), FAIR (the Foundation for Apologetic Information and Research) is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to providing well-documented answers to criticisms of Latter-day Saint doctrine, belief, and practice.

A Chat With The New Editors Of The Maxwell Institute Journals

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Accompanying this issue of Insights is volume 17 (combining numbers one and two) of the Journal of Book of Mormon Studies; however, readers will note that the Journal now carries a new name, the Journal of the Book of Mormon and Restoration Scripture. In connection with this change, the Institute asked Andrew H. Hedges, an associate professor of Church History and Doctrine at BYU, to become the new editor, replacing Professor S. Kent Brown, who served as editor and associate editor for many years, and who recently retired from the university. The new associate editors are Grant Hardy, professor of …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Book Of Mormon Project Continues With New Volume

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Maxwell Institute and Brigham Young University are pleased to announce the release of part 5 of volume 4 of the Book of Mormon Critical Text Project, Analysis of Textual Variants of the Book of Mormon. Part 5 analyzes the text from Alma 56 through 3 Nephi 18.

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

The Joseph Smith Papers Project, Ronald K. Esplin

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Joseph Smith Papers Project seeks to do for Joseph Smith what has been done (and is being done) for George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and other important early Americans: Make their papers easily accessible and more intelligible by publishing them in a carefully prepared, comprehensive scholarly edition. Historians rely on documents to gain insight into the facts, relationships, and other realities of the past, the raw materials from which they construct their narratives and interpretations. The task of scholars functioning as documentary editors is to help readers and other scholars understand the documents without getting too much in …

Full Issue

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

No abstract provided.

Willes Center Awards Research Grants

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

The Laura F. Willes Center for Book of Mormon Studies announces five faculty research grants for the 2008–2009 academic year: Susan Easton Black and Andrew C. Skinner, “The Phrase ‘This Land’: Doctrinal and Geographical Implications for Latter-day Saints” (a book-length study).

Book Of Mormon Swords In Mesoamerican Antiquity, Matthew Roper

Insights: The Newsletter of the Neal A. Maxwell Institute for Religious Scholarship

Swords are an important weapon in the Book of Mormon narrative. The prophet Ether reported that in the final battle of the Jaredites, King Coriantumr, with his sword, “smote off the head” of his relentless enemy Shiz (Ether 15:30). Swords were also used by the earliest Nephites (2 Nephi 5:14) and were among the deadly weapons with which that people were finally “hewn down” at Cumorah by their enemies (Mormon 6:9–10). While the text suggests that some Jaredites and early Nephites may have had metal weaponry (1 Nephi 4:9; 2 Nephi 5:14; Mosiah 8:10–11; Ether 7:9), references to metal weapons, …

Don Antonio De Alcedo's Spanish Slant On The Upper Country, Ted Bays

Upper Country: A Journal of the Lake Superior Region

Don Antonio de Alcedo’s 1786-89 Diccionario geografico-historico de las Indias Occidentale o America includes entries about countries, provinces, cities, villages, and hamlets; about every aspect of political, cultural and natural history; and about products from cochineal to zarzaparilla, from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego. As a Spanish military officer he naturally focused most of this monumental five-volumework on New Spain, from the North American southwest to Patagonia and Chile. This article covers his descriptions of Lake Superior, Nipigon, Michipicoten, and Michilimackinac.

Upjohn Press Catalog 2022-2023, W.E. Upjohn Institute For Employment Research

Upjohn Press

No abstract provided.

A Reflection Of Canadian Society? An Analysis Of Federal Appointments To Provincial Superior Courts By The Liberal Government Of Justin Trudeau, Erin Crandall

Dalhousie Law Journal

Recent reforms to Canada’s system of federal judicial appointments have sought to make the process more transparent and better able to produce a bench reflective of the society it serves. This paper reviews these reforms and using judicial appointment data (2016–2020), considers whether the Liberal government has met these objectives. The relationship between official bilingualism and representation on the bench is also considered. The paper finds that “diversity” on Canada’s federally appointed provincial courts remains unbalanced. While women have made up the majority of appointments since the Trudeau Liberals formed government in 2015, other equity-deserving groups, like people of colour …

The Case For Dynamic Cities, Brian J. Asquith, Margaret C. Bock

Upjohn Institute Working Papers

Cities today are confronting never-before-seen challenges to their top spot in the economic hierarchy. In this chapter, we lay out four challenges, past and future, that cities face today and identify policies that can help address the problems we identify. We call attention to the need for many U.S. cities to redevelop the large amount of aging postwar single-family housing, while reforming past exclusionary zoning and infrastructure decisions that exacerbated inequality. Cities will have to fix these past mistakes against the backdrop of an aging population and the rise of remote working, both of which undercut cities’ traditional source of …

Neighborhood Characteristics And Dementia Symptomology Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults With Alzheimer’S Disease, Dana M. Alhasan, Matthew C. Lohman Ph.D., Jana A. Hirsch, Margaret Chandlee Miller Ms, Ph.D., Bo Cai Ph.D., Chandra L. Jackson

Faculty Publications

Background: Neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs) lead to myriad poor health outcomes among individuals with Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Prior studies have observed associations between the various aspects of the home environment and NPSs, but macro-level environmental stressors (e.g., neighborhood income) may also disrupt the neuronal microenvironment and exacerbate NPSs. Yet, to our knowledge, no studies have investigated the relationship between the neighborhood environment and NPSs.

Methods: Using 2010 data among older adults with AD collected from a sample of the South Carolina Alzheimer’s Disease Registry, we estimated cross-sectional associations between neighborhood characteristics and NPSs in the overall population and by race/ethnicity. Neighborhood …

Local Agency And Development Trajectories In A Rural Region, Deanna Hutchinson, Robyn Eversole

Faculty Journal Articles

Employing a theoretical lens from the anthropology of development, this paper takes an actor-oriented approach to understand the socio-cultural context of regional path development in a peripheral rural region and the role of local agency, drawing on a qualitative case study of the Cradle Coast region of Tasmania, Australia. Findings demonstrate the value of bottom-up attention to the logics of regional actors to understand regional development trajectories and the emergence of new economic paths. Analysing the regional development logics and actions of local actors in particular contexts can reveal the mechanisms through which regions create new paths or reinforce old …

Sequential Lonsdaleite To Diamond Formation In Ureilite Meteorites Via In Situ Chemical Fluid/Vapor Deposition, Andrew G. Tomkins, Nicholas C. Wilson, Colin Macrae, Alan Salek, Matthew R. Field, Helen E.A. Brand, Andrew D. Langendam, Natasha R. Stephen, Aaron Torpy, Zsanett Pintér, Lauren A. Jennings, Dougal G. Mcculloch

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Ureilite meteorites are arguably our only large suite of samples from the mantle of a dwarf planet and typically contain greater abundances of diamond than any known rock. Some also contain lonsdaleite, which may be harder than diamond. Here, we use electron microscopy to map the relative distribution of coexisting lonsdaleite, diamond, and graphite in ureilites. These maps show that lonsdaleite tends to occur as polycrystalline grains, sometimes with distinctive fold morphologies, partially replaced by diamond + graphite in rims and cross-cutting veins. These observations provide strong evidence for how the carbon phases formed in ureilites, which, despite much conjecture …