A complex habitat containing more rich and vast abiotic factors, such as sunlight, rain, water, and soil, has a much higher chance of successfully providing homes to different species of plants and animals than any homogeneous landscape would. This goal of researchers was to prove that the biodiversity of a homogeneous habitat is much lower than that of a heterogeneous area, meaning it only provides for very few species of plants and animals. Researchers sought to test this hypothesis in an ecosystem located in Northeastern US. They constructed an index consisting of organized study plots that sought to summarize differences in terrain and soil properties. Researchers then measured the species richness and diversity in several study plots with high geomorphological heterogeneity within their species and others with low geomorphological heterogeneity. The results of the study proved that areas that experienced more change in terrain and soil conditions (heterogeneous) were much more diverse when it came to shrub and tree species. They also concluded that the differences in aspects and soil drainage were particularly important predictors of biotic diversity. The results of the study showed a close relationship between abiotic and biotic diversity and thus have important implications to conservation strategies in the coming future. I found this research article to be informative and interesting. Some of the information on the study, including geomorphological heterogeneity, was for the most part new to me. I was generally aware of the effect of a habitats diversity on the niches it could provide for. I learned that the variation in soil and drainage was a major factor when it came to the diversity of a landscape. Think that this article would be interesting to others because it provides detailed explanations of an interesting topic most of us already know about. The hypothesis backed by persuasive data and eventually the conclusion of the study which i think will also be of interest to others.

Different steps were required to acquire the needed data. Variations in topographic aspects, slope, drainage, soil depth, and horizon textures were estimated separately and combined to produce an index of geomorphological heterogeneity for every 2 hectares. Each of these geomorphological features were combined into a single composite data set. Researchers used the Shannon-Weaver diversity index to create an index of geomorphological heterogeneity for all the cells.

Authors:

Michael R. Burnette; Pete V. August; James H. Brown Jr.; Keith T. Killingbeck

Link to Article:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1523-1739.1998.96238.x/full

Citations:

Ali A. El-Keblawy, Abdel-Hamid A. Khedr, Tamer A. Khafaga, Mountainous landscape vegetation and species composition at Wadi Helo: A protected area in Hajar Mountains, UAE, Arid Land Research and Management, 2016, 30, 4, 389

In “It’s Not How Much You Play, But How Much You Enjoy The Game: The Longitudinal Associations Between Adolescents’ Self-Esteem and the Frequency vs Enjoyment of Involvement In Sports”, authors Paul J.  C. Adachi and Teena Willoughby discuss the topic of the bidirectional associations in adolescent athletic involvement and self-esteem.  The two authors seek to answer two research questions:                                                     1) “Does self-esteem predict frequency in involvement in sports over time, or does the frequency of athletic involvement predict self-esteem?”.               2) “Is enjoyment of sports associated with self esteem?                                            To answer these questions, Adachi and Willoughby surveyed a group of 1492 high school aged adolescents repeatedly over the course of four years. The students would be given questionnaires by researchers in a classroom setting, and asked to respond to questions on their athletic involvement using a five-point scale. The results were then analyzed using an auto regressive cross-lagged model, which organized the data into a form from which conclusions could be drawn. Interestingly, the authors accounted for many factors in their research, including gender, parental education, and at risk backgrounds. Based on the results, Willoughby and Adachi came to the conclusion that higher self esteem results in higher involvement in sports, though the reverse is not true. They also found that higher self-esteem tends to result in greater enjoyment of athletic activity. Notably, neither of these results showed any significant variation by gender. The authors suggested that enjoyment may be more important than frequency when discussing involvement in sports.

I found the study to be interesting and well done. I especially appreciated the careful attention the researchers paid to the variables involved which might alter results. For example, when looking at the relationship between self-esteem and enjoyment, they were careful to control for frequency. My only complaint was that I would have appreciated if they looked more directly at the differences between frequency and enjoyment. Because the two ideas were evaluated in different questions, the comparison of the two seemed somewhat of an afterthought.

J. Youth Adolesence (2014) 43:137-145

In an article produced by Richard Burk and Kenneth Lenihan from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, they do a great job in explaining crime and poverty. Yes, crime and poverty is something that is linked and it has been noticed that crime occurs at a much higher rate in poverty stricken areas. This is pointed out at the very early on. However, there are certain issues that arise while trying to study such a topic such as collinearity the ecological fallacy, and defining different terms and boundaries. This looked at participants of the TARP program which stands for Transitional Aid Research Project. The project took felons and put them into four different groups after they were released from prison and this study analyzes these people for a 12-month period after they were released. They took a look at participants in each of four different groups. They analyzed the effects of different amounts of support over different period of time to try and figure out what worked best for reducing the rate of recidivism. With several variable they found that the data was insufficient to make any conclusions and that a longer analyzation time of possibly 24 months would have helped. The study focused predominately on unemployment benefits and what was found is that extending unemployment insurance benefits to released prisoners will not increase recidivism overall. This makes it possible to argue for policies of this nature but just like most studies there is no causal proof. This study took a more in depth look at the crime and poverty debate and focused more on issues of how to solve the problem.

Richard A. Berk, Kenneth J. Lenihan and Peter H. Rossi. “Crime and Poverty: Some                           Experimental Evidence From Ex-Offenders.” American Sociological Review, Vol. 45,                  No. 5 (Oct., 1980), pp. 766-786 http://www.jstor.org/stable/2094894

In the article, Student Mobility: A negligible and confounded influence on student achievement, researcher Dan Wright, “examined the effect of student mobility on achievement test scores” (Wright 1999, 347). Risk factors such as low family income, and ethnic minority status were reviewed and were found to have a great influence on the factors of mobility being tested. Wright perceived the effects of student mobility had, “broad implications beyond student achievement (Wright 1999, 348).

Participants for the study were third and fourth grade students in a total of 33 elementary schools, all of which were located in a large urban school district in the Midwest. All 33 of the schools have completed state and national standardized tests prior to the study. The student demographic included, 68% ethnic minority status, and 71% were eligible for free or reduced lunch programs.

Wrights objective in conducting the study was to, “examine and compare the influences of two distinct aspects of mobility; moving either into or out of the district (location mobility), and moving either before or after the spring assessments (temporal mobility) (Wright 1999, 348). The two types of mobilities being assessed were associated with different types of research question. In order to answer the first Wright conducted, “a series of univariate, two factor analyses of variance (ANOVA’s)” (Wright 1999, 349). He used location and temporal mobility as independent variables, and the four achievement measures were used as dependent variables.

I found the group of participants used in the study to be very beneficial. The age range Wright chose (third and fourth graders) was helpful to the study because in my mind these would be the students who would have been most affected by a change in mobility. They are at the age where they are old enough to realize what is going on and can easily be affected by a change. Especially a change in their schooling.

The impact of religious faith on attitudes to environmental issues and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies: A mixed methods study

Hope, Aimie LB, and Christopher R. Jones. “The impact of religious faith on attitudes to environmental issues and Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technologies: A mixed methods study.” Technology in Society 38 (2014): 48-59.

This socio-environmental study was published in the journal of Technology in Society in 2014, and was conducted by Aimie Hope and Christopher Jones, who investigated the potential differences in environmental values and beliefs of people representing Christian, Muslim and secular communities. They began to explore this topic by asking two questions: (1) what were potential differences between the Muslim, Christian and secular participants in terms of pro-environmental values and beliefs; and (2) how attitudes to carbon capture storage (CCS) and climate change were shaped by religious beliefs. The type of data needed to answer the questions were deeply held opinions and attitudes as well as reports of acts, events and behaviors. Therefore, an exploratory mixed methods approach was utilized, combining in-depth focus group discussions with a short questionnaire, which incorporated topics from the New Environmental Paradigm (NEP) scale that addresses themes surrounding anti-anthropocentrism; the reality of limits to growth; the rejection of exemptionalism; the possibility of eco-crisis; and the fragility of nature’s balance. The focus group discussions were recorded and transcribed and thematically examined, while the surveys were statistically analyzed through an NEP Template Analysis. The results revealed that both Christian and Muslim groups had relatively low perceptions of urgency for environmental issues due to beliefs in an afterlife and divine intervention while secular participants expressed anxiety in relation to environmental issues, especially climate change due to a lack of belief in an afterlife or divine intervention leading them to focus on human need for action.

Overall, this study is very comprehensive and studies many aspects of environmental issues and provides meaningful results, but I think the researchers could have surveyed many more participants and held a few more focus groups. Increasing participants in general would have definitely taken more time, but I personally don’t think 20 people could accurately represent the three different religious views accurately, so getting more people to increase the variation in responses would’ve been more interesting as well as providing a better foundation for results.

One thing I found quite interesting is that a few people from the Muslim and Christian faiths thought CCS was “interfering” with our environment, even though the constant release of fossil fuels into our atmosphere doesn’t matter too much. It just showed me how much religion can skew or enhance one’s views to a great extent.

The topic of this article is planning cities to make room in space and policies for urban agriculture, because it has a range of social and environmental benefits. This research focuses on the planning strategies of two Pacific northwest cities: Portland and Vancouver. The research question is “How does each city’s use of land inventories in urban planning affect its success in realistically supporting urban agriculture?” In urban planning, land inventories basically mean that planners are taking into account what land is available for future development and what uses that land should have to accommodate the growth of the city. This involves general plans and specific policies on zoning. The data collected consisted of information on each city’s policies, projects, and committees that had anything to do with urban agriculture, which is a combination of organizational data from the cities, and reports of events regarding what actually happened in each city and at specific urban agriculture sites. Their analysis was of the cities both individually and compared to one another. Since there was no numerical data collected, the analysis was qualitative. They found that overall, Portland’s policies and practices were more effective, the most obvious difference being that Portland involved more institutions than just the city itself. Both cities, however, showed that public policy that takes natural resources, like soil components, into account with the goal of sustainability can accomplish a lot.

Reference: Mendes, W., Balmer, K., Kaethler, T., & Rhoads, A. (2008). Using Land Inventories to Plan for Urban Agriculture: Experiences From Portland and Vancouver. Journal of the American Planning Association, 74(4), 435-449. doi:10.1080/01944360802354923

The article The Ontogeny of Fairness in Seven Societies written by P.R. Blake in Nature, is about research on different adolescents and their degree and modes of fairness. The researchers wanted to find out whether different children of different ages and backgrounds had similar or different ways of thinking when it came to what they thought was fair. To test this, they paired up children of similar age, and tested their levels of disadvantageous inequality aversion (DI) and advantageous inequality aversion (AI). DI is when you do not tolerate being exploited whereas AI is when you reject a relative advantage. Researchers hypothesized that DI would be more common in the younger children, and that AI would most likely present itself when they children became older due to social norms and maturity. Results showed that their first hypothesis of DI being more common in adolescence was true, although its development varied with the different areas that the kids came from. AI did appear more frequently in other children, but this was explained that it was due to the westernized cultures they came from. Parents in westernized cultures tend to encourage independence and so it is a possible explanation as to why these particular children reacted in that manner. Overall, they were correct when they predicted DI developing first over AI.

For this research, the topic was children’s reaction to fairness, and the question was to find the difference in their reactions based on age and background. To answer this question, the type of data needed was acts, behaviors, or events, and the data collection method was detached observation as they watched what each child did when placed in either a DI or AI situation. To analyze this data, the researchers formed their findings into ordinal data; they ranked the child’s levels of DI and AI, and at what ages/maturity they were found. These observations were then compared to those of different children.

At the end of the article, enhancements for the research were discussed which I thought was helpful. One explained how their research only studied a specific age group and that it was most likely that these traits would change throughout their own lifespan. Another was that further research could test children from a greater amount of diverse societies. Overall, I thought was a very interesting research study, and one that could be used as an example as to why children act the way they do due to their upbringings.

Blake, P. R., K. Mcauliffe, J. Corbit, T. C. Callaghan, O. Barry, A. Bowie, L. Kleutsch, K. L. Kramer, E. Ross, H. Vongsachang, R. Wrangham, and F. Warneken. “The ontogeny of fairness in seven societies.” Nature 528.7581 (2015): 258-61. Web. 17 Feb. 2017.

In OAH Magazine of History, Vol. 25, No. 3 the article, “Baseball, 9/11, and Dissent: the Carlos Delgado Controversy” by Angel G. Flores-Rodríguez discusses how in the aftermath of the 9/11, America’s pastime helped bring the country together yet despite that not all agreed with its response in the years following. Sport unites people from all walks of life and “brings fans together in a shared sense of passion and excitement” (55) that’s unlike anything else. In the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks, Americans were scared as to what the future held and how its government would respond. Yet despite all the fear and anxiety going around fragile country found hope in the form of its pastime: baseball. Patriotism soared to an all-time high and it visibly transformed ballparks and the game itself.

Just two years following the attacks US Armed Forces were in Iraq and Afghanistan and the patriotism that was so infectious in the months following 9/11, seemed like a distance memory. While “God Bless America” rang out in the seventh inning and fans showed support for the nation’s war effort, not everyone felt the same. In the 2004 season, then Toronto Blue Jays first baseman and Puerto Rican slugger Carlos Delgado went public with his decision to sit for the playing of the tune. He cited his disconcert with the US Navy’s decision which had stopped activity on two-thirds of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as well the United States’ decision to test the same types of bombs that were dropped in Iraq in Vieques. Delgado received criticism from all over and was seen by some as anti-American. Fans online “argued that Delgado’s actions spelled disrespect for the victims of September 11” (56) and even some within the Blue Jays organization believed it was inappropriate to bringing politics into baseball.

In terms of data and data gathering method used in this article, interviews and surveying online sites were used as means of collecting data. The media is an essential part of sports and how they cover the players and teams themselves. They give fans an insight as to what’s going on inside the locker room and if there is anything interesting going on. And with Delgado’s decision to sit and it being plastered all over the news by the media, debate opened up which in general I think is a healthy aspect of every society.

The article, Can Tutors Be Supported in Giving Effective Explanations? By Jörg Wittwer, Matthias Nückles, Nina Landmann, and Alexander Renkl from the University of Freiburg, questions whether tutors are ineffective in giving explanations without previous background knowledge on the tutees individual knowledge level. The study examined 30 sets of tutors and tutees, the researchers gave half of the tutors information on the tutee’s individual knowledge level, while giving the other half of the tutors no information on their tutee’s. After a few weeks the researchers realized that the tutor’s who had information on their tutee’s were able to customize instruction for them, bettering their understanding of the tutor’s explanations, while the other tutee’s were not fully comprehending their tutor’s explanations. The study very clearly showed, that only the tutors that were given background information on their tutee’s individual knowledge could successfully explain concepts to them. Overall, the findings suggest that a diagnosis-based approach to support tutors in developing a model in how to properly teach the tutee effectively contributes to the individualization of instruction in tutoring. All in all, the article is answering the research question of how can tutors give effective explanations to tutees? Therefore, the type of data needed in order to answer this question is acts, behavior, or events, since the researchers conducted their research by listening and watching in on tutoring sessions. The data-gathering method would then be detached observation, since the researcher is simply watching and listening to who they are trying to collect data from. The method of data analysis would be ordinal, since the researchers are only ranking the tutees based off of how well they appear to be absorbing the information. Overall, I found this to be a very interesting way to conduct research. It seemed to be a lot more laid back than most research strategies. However, I still found it to be effective in answering their research question, something that I think would interest the rest of the class as well.

Wittwer, Jörge, Nückles, Matthias, Landmann, Nina, and Renkl, Alexander. (2010). Can Tutors Be Supported in Giving Effective Explanations? Journal of Educational Psychology, Vol. 102, No. 1, pp. 1-256.

Now that I have started to look into the reasons behind women choosing to enter into religious communities (particularly fundamentalist), I thought I would give myself a starting point by reading some literature on the reasons behind why people, in general turn to religion. This article/study by Steven Reiss is titled “Why People Turn to Religion: A Motivational Analysis.” It was written in 2000, so perhaps the world of religion has changed somewhat since the publication date, but it is still valuable data to take into account. The research question at hand is “What psychological forces drive people to turn to religion?” This study takes an already established psychological measure called the Reiss Profile of Fundamental Goals and Motivational Sensitivities. This identifies and then looks into 15 fundamental desires, beginning by evaluating ordinal data responses of “very,” “somewhat,” and “not religious” from mental retardation service providers and college students. All of these responses are found to, in some way, correlate with the 15 fundamental desires. These desires are independence, power, honor, family, vengeance, order, romance, idealism, status, acceptance, social contact, tranquility, eating, curiosity, and exercise. The two groups tested are chosen because of availability and access, which in my opinion doesn’t seem to create a completely representative sample, but the individuals within the groups seem to be of a variety of different backgrounds although 411 of the total 556 are women, and 454 are caucasian. Each individual is provided with a 120 item self- reported survey on their personal opinion in relation to aspects of the 15 fundamental desires.

The results of the study first and foremost show no difference between men and women. In general, high levels of religiosity correlate with low desires for independence. Religious people are also found to value honor more than their religious counterparts, who also place lower value in family and order. However, the author recognizes that the most significant finding is that of a correlation between high religiosity and low independence. Instead, these individuals are depending on God, which has historically been identified as a sign of weakness, but this study rejects such claims. It also shows that people who are religious are more likely to be loyal to their family and honor. Therefor, these are the forces that attract people either towards, or away from religion. More than anything, this indicates how certain individuals would like to behave, rather than how they actually do.

For the sake of my research topic, I would have liked to have seen where the data from women fell in this study. I can assume that since the individuals participating in the study were of a female majority, the results are pretty indicative of their choices. However, being able to see how their responses differed compared to men would have been interesting. Overall, the article and study was very informative and took into account a lot more facets of religious affiliation than I had ever considered before.

Reiss, S. (2000). Why People Turn to Religion: A Motivational Analysis. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 39(1), 47-52. Retrieved from http://0-www.jstor.org.books.redlands.edu/stable/1387926