18043 research outputs found
Sort by
Rural America as a Commons
Get PDFWith many ready to dismiss non-urban life as a relic of history, rural America’s place in the future is in question. The rural role in the American past is understandably more apparent. As the story of urbanization goes in the United States and elsewhere, the majority of the population used to live in rural places, including small towns and sparsely populated counties. A substantial proportion of those people worked in agriculture, manufacturing, or extractive industries. But trends associated with modernity—mechanization, automation, globalization, and environmental conservation, for instance—have reduced the perceived need for a rural workforce. Roughly since the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century, rural depopulation has continued with some consistency. In 1940, the U.S. rural population peaked at 57% of the total population. Today, that proportion is 14%.
Rural populations’ presence in distressed regions borne of fading legacy industries raises questions of whether it is a beneficial use of scarce public resources to support rural regions, and whether the rural way of life is consistent with modern needs. And thus, the fate of the 14% and their communities, at least in the most struggling regions, is in question.
While many urbanites are quick to dismiss rural issues as niche issues, geographic inequality, rurality, and rural livelihoods are implicated in one way or another in virtually all the crises described above. Framing the countryside as obsolescent or superfluous overlooks fundamental aspects of the often-invisible urban-rural interdependence that undergirds American life. Cities still rely heavily on rural resources and workers and will need to do so even more in the face of climate change. As such, rural resources, workers, and localities need to be taken more seriously as a critical component of an interdependent national system
Edward Barradall\u27s Reports of Cases in the General Court of Virginia (1733-1741)
Get PDFEdward Barradall was born in London, the son of Henry Barradall and Catherine Blumfield Barradall. He was baptized on 17 October 1703 in the parish church of St. Paul\u27s, Covent Garden. Both of his brothers and two of his sisters came to Virginia in the 1730s. Edward Barradall was in Virginia by February 1731. From at least then until about 1733, he practiced law in the county courts of Caroline County and the Northern Neck. His law reports begin in 1733, and so it is to be presumed that that is the year he moved his practice from the county courts to the General Court in Williamsburg. He lived in Williamsburg from then until his death in 1743. The excellence of his legal mind is demonstrated by the high quality of his arguments in that court as published herein..
Hollow Joe-Pye weed, Eutrochium fistulosum, 2023 Virginia Native Plant Society Wildflower of the Year.
No full textHollow Joe-pye-weed is a perennial herb that may grow as tall as 35 dm (about 11.5 feet). Stems are frequently purple and, when young, are covered with a thin, glaucous, layer of wax. Cross sections of stems will reveal the presence of hollow cavities in the central pith region. Leaves are whorled, 3-7 per node; leaf shape varies from narrowly to broadly elliptic or lanceolate or narrowly oblong, 2-6 cm wide and 12-25 cm long; leaves are tapered at both base and apex; leaf surfaces are wrinkled, finely hairy or hairless, and may be resin-dotted or not; leaf veins are pinnate. Flowers are small and clustered into cylindric heads consisting of 4-7 individual pink to purple flowers; basal bracts of the heads (phyllaries) are 6.5-9 mm long; numerous groups of flower-bearing heads arise from several uppermost stem nodes and form multiple corymbs that range from nearly globose to almost flat-topped. Individual flowers are of the “discoid” form found in the Daisy Family. Paired stigmas of individual flowers can often be seen extending above the heads, but other flower details are small and hidden by the phyllaries. Fruits are single-seeded achenes that disperse by wind, assisted by remnants of sepals at their apex—overall the pattern is reminiscent of the parachute-like fruits of the Common Dandelion
Seed longevity and germination of the emerging invasive species wavyleaf basketgrass (Oplismenus undulatifolius) under varied light regimes
No full textInvasive nonindigenous species pose a serious threat to native biodiversity and ecosystem functioning. Understanding how species’ performance varies under conditions in the current and invaded range can help to predict the dynamics of the invading species in its new environment. Plants with the ability to alter growth in response to variation in light conditions may be favored in landscapes that experience frequent disturbance, as these species may be able to exploit a wide range of niches. Seedbank persistence may also play a critical role in successful plant invasion, as extended seed viability may increase the chance of outlasting unfavorable conditions, maintain population genetic diversity, and allow reinvasions. This study investigated seed longevity and the effect of light intensity on germination of wavyleaf basketgrass [Oplismenus undulatifolius (Ard.) Roem. & Schult.], a newly established invasive species in U.S. mid-Atlantic forest understories. Oplismenus undulatifolius seeds were collected across 5 yr from the original site of introduction in Maryland, USA, and stored in standard lab conditions, then subjected to germination trials under four light conditions in a controlled growth chamber. Seeds remained viable for at least 9 yr, and light intensity did not significantly impact seed germination. Our study demonstrates the importance of evaluating environmental and temporal effects on germination traits, because the scope of surveillance in the field may need to be expanded based on new information about environmental tolerance. Long-term monitoring may also be necessary to effectively control invasive plant populations capable of forming a persistent seedbank
Voices of Black Talent in Chemistry: Retention Strategies and Personal Success Stories
No full textJuneteenth, a federal holiday officially recognized in 2021, is celebrated annually in the United States to honor the emancipation of enslaved Black Americans. As a symbol of racial justice, equality, and equity, Juneteenth represents an opportunity to pay tribute to the achievements of a wide range of Black chemistry students and the initiatives taken to promote the success of every student within an environment that has historically not been inclusive
Educators’ perspectives of using (or not using) online exam proctoring.
Get PDFThe onset of the COVID-19 pandemic changed the land- scape of education and led to increased usage of remote proc- toring tools that are designed to monitor students when they take assessments outside the classroom. While prior work has explored students’ privacy and security concerns regard- ing online proctoring tools, the perspective of educators is under explored. Notably, educators are the decision makers in the classrooms and choose which remote proctoring ser- vices and the level of observations they deem appropriate. To explore how educators balance the security and privacy of their students with the requirements of remote exams, we sent survey requests to over 3,400 instructors at a large private university that taught online classes during the 2020/21 aca- demic year. We had n = 125 responses: 21% of the educators surveyed used online exam proctoring services during the remote learning period, and of those, 35% plan to continue using the tools even when there is a full return to in-person learning. Educators who use exam proctoring services are of- ten comfortable with their monitoring capabilities. However, educators are concerned about students sharing certain types of information with exam proctoring companies, particularly when proctoring services collect identifiable information to validate students’ identities. Our results suggest that many ed- ucators developed alternative assessments that did not require online proctoring and that those who did use online proctoring services often considered the tradeoffs between the potential risks to student privacy and the utility or necessity of exam proctoring services
What Caused the Fall of Nikolai A. Voznesenskii? The Gosplan Affair, the Leningrad Affair and Political Infighting in Stalin\u27s Inner Circle, 1949–1950
No full textThe 1949–1952 Gosplan Affair is rarely mentioned in the literature on late Stalinism, insofar as this purge of Politburo member Nikolai A. Voznesenskii and his clients at the USSR Council of Ministers Economic Planning Committee (Gosplan) is usually conflated with the coterminous Leningrad Affair. According to most scholars, Voznesenskii played a role in Andrei A. Zhdanov\u27s Leningrad patron-client network, which was purged after the death of its leader in 1948 on Stalin\u27s orders. This article revisits the Gosplan Affair and the campaign against Voznesenskii on the basis of an array of newly declassified archival sources. It demonstrates much of Voznesenskii\u27s spectacular fall to have been separate and distinct from the Leningrad Affair, and to have stemmed from rivalries within Stalin\u27s inner circle rather than at the general secretary\u27s behest. It also provides an unprecedentedly close perspective on postwar political infighting in the party leadership at the end of Stalin\u27s reign and the beginning of the Cold War
Critic-Guided Decoding for Controlled Text Generation
No full textSteering language generation towards objectives or away from undesired content has been a long-standing goal in utilizing language models (LM). Recent work has demonstrated reinforcement learning and weighted decoding as effective approaches to achieve a higher level of language control and quality with pros and cons. In this work, we propose a novel critic decoding method for controlled language generation (CriticControl) that combines the strengths of reinforcement learning and weighted decoding. Specifically, we adopt the actor-critic framework and train an LM-steering critic from reward models. Similar to weighted decoding, our method freezes the language model and manipulates the output token distribution using a critic to improve training efficiency and stability. Evaluation of our method on three controlled generation tasks, topic control, sentiment control, and detoxification, shows that our approach generates more coherent and well-controlled texts than previous methods. In addition, CriticControl demonstrates superior generalization ability in zero-shot settings. Human evaluation studies also corroborate our findings