Sourced from the Ecological Restoration journal, authors Rosaleen G. March and Elizabeth H. Smith demonstrate a data analysis technique utilizing spatial data to locate target areas for restoration in their article “Combining Available Spatial Data to De ne Restoration Goals.” The technique utilizes public soil data from Natural Resources Conservation Services (NRCS) website to identify the natural vegetation characteristic with each specific soil type. This creates a base map of “grouped ecological sites” that then is overlaid with current land use and zoning patterns. The authors tested their method on 2 barrier strandplain peninsulas in the Texas Coastal Bend—Lamar and Live Oak peninsulas to find target areas with ease. Results show two target areas including a highway median that would be ideal for restoration. March and Smith use reports of acts, behaviors or events from the Natural Resource Conservation Service (NRCS) to answer their research question. They gathered this data from public records and imagery from the software ArcGIS. This is the same software utilized in spatial studies courses at the University of Redlands and is available on all the PC computers connected to the school’s server for students to use. By adding the current land use patterns over the blocks of potential vegetation based off soil data, target areas are easily identifiable with by just observing the map. This method of data analysis, I believe, is the way of the future. Patterns in data can be easily identified when displayed spatially.

March, R. G., & Smith, E. H. (2011). Combining Available Spatial Data to Define Restoration Goals. Ecological Restoration, 29(3), 252-260.

Crime & Delinquency: “Schools, Neighborhood Risk Factors, and Crime.” By Dale, Willits, Lisa Broidy, and Kristine Denman.

Their research question is: Do schools contribute to neighborhood crime rates? The data types they used were demographic data, organizational data, and deeply held opinions and attitudes. The data collection methods they used were in depth interviews and public and private records. They came together find if schools contribute to the crime rates in neighborhoods. They were not funded and did everything themselves. They conducted three slightly different hypotheses and found research to be not very convincing. They found that higher level block groups meaning those with either a high or low disadvantaged and instability situation had higher crime rates than those categorized with a lower block level. Their results supported a few different conclusions but the main one is that is somewhat supported their first hypothesis meaning that schools have some influence on crime rates in neighborhoods.

As they also said in their conclusion, this study lacked control in opinions. There has been very few studies previously on this question which leave a decent room for error. Their hypotheses’ were only partially supported which does not look good in my opinion. For the one or two classmates of mine that are doing something related to crime, I think this is something to look into if examining influence on crime rates or causes.

Crime & Delinquency: Volume 60, Number 1

By: Ji Hyon Kang and James P. Lynch

This article examines the impact of victim—offender relationships on the willingness of the victim to call the police in situations pertaining to family violence and whether or not those rates are different depending on the life stage of the victim. The article puts the victim and offenders in three categories: children (adult or young), spouse, and parent. The roles that each family member plays may affect their willingness to call the police because some hold more power, experience and authority than others as well as different cognition patterns. They found that the relationship and age does affect reporting decision. If the offender is the spouse or child, the likelihood of the victim reporting family violence is higher. However, the results showed that reporting rates are not significant different the three age groups. However the results were inconsistent with their three hypotheses.

The articles research question was: Does victim – offender relationships and life stages affect the willingness to call the police in incidents of family violence? The type of data they used was reports of acts, behavior, or events and the data collection methods were surveys and

public and private records. I liked their research and think they did a good job because they touched on family abuse from different angles than what people usually hear about. However, all three of their hypotheses were not true which is interesting. I think my classmates would like

to hear about the rates of the less talked about family abuse relationships.

This article was titled “Genetic consequences of historical anthropogenic and ecological events on giant pandas,” and was written by multiple  contributors because of the project’s focus. This research was conducted because of the growing concern about the Giant pandas’ ability to adapt to the changing climate due to its increasing habitat loss, poaching, and other issues like that.  In this article the researchers focus more on two of the main wild panda populations, the Qionaglai and the Minshan.

There were two main areas that the article focused on– one of which is lesser known. The two areas were the consequences of bamboo flowering and the exact populations where the poaching and removal from the wild are currently taking place. Though according to the research results that the team put together, the panda populations are actually fairly healthy genetically speaking with only a little bit of evidence for bottlenecking in the Qionaglai population of pandas, but that was found in both historical and modern samples which showed a long-term decline (several thousand years) not short-term. Though at the end of the article they made sure to warn that even though pandas do seem to have a fairly bright future now, it is only because of the conservation efforts taken and laws passed by China. Bamboo flowering is a bad for the pandas because after the flowering occurs, the plants die off in 40-100 year intervals and directly reduce food availability.

The main question this article seems to be answering is whether the historical data on the current population and genetic health of giant pandas is correct or if there is currently a distinct loss of genetic diversity in the near future.

In conducting this study the researchers had to gather data for both historical data and current data for their focus groups — the two panda populations. For the historical data they collected skins from institutions and agencies across china, and the deaths of those pandas was contributed to starvation due to bamboo flowering during the 1970s and 1980s or poaching during the 1950’s and 1988 when China  enacted a wildlife protection act. They also collected blood, fur, and feces from multiple individuals whom were either wild or wild, but in captivity and awaiting release. So the majority of the data used was observatory in form.

Zhu, Lifeng, Yibo Hu, Dunwu Qi, Hua Wu, Xiangjiang Zhan, Zhejun Zhang, Michael W. Bruford, Jinliang Wang, Xuyu Yang, Xiaodong Gu, Lei Zhang, Baowei Zhang, Shanning Zhang, and Fuwen Wei. “Genetic consequences of historical anthropogenic and ecological events on giant pandas.” Ecology 94.10 (2013): 2346-357. text.

Influence of recent bark beetle outbreak on fire severity and postfire tree regeneration in montane Douglas-fir forests

Brian J. Harvey, Daniel C. Donato, William H. Romme, and Monica G. Turner

This study was conducted to asses the impact bark beetles has on wildfires and how quickly they spread along with tree regeneration after the fire had occurred. These researchers looked at the Gunbarrel fire of 2008, which took out 27,000 hectares of Douglas-fir (pseudotsuga menzeisii) dominant wilderness. This area experienced a bark beetle outbreak 4-13 years before the fire occurred and the majority of the trees were dead or dying with their needles dropped. There were 85 plots sampled for stand structure pre-fire and severity of bark beetle outbreak. It was found that fire severity was directly correlated with topography and burning conditions. Regeneration of Douglas-firs after the fire was low with no tree seedlings in 65% of plots. Tree seedlings were abundant in plots with low fire severity that also had low outbreaks of bark beetles. There is no link between the severity of burn and outbreak of bark beetles, but together they have high disturbance level.

To answer these questions about Douglas-fir populations in lower mountainous regions, researchers had to use reports of acts, behaviors, and events because they are looking at the behaviors of species in relation to a disease and fire.

To conduct this study, 85 plots were sampled in the mid Rocky mountain eco-region. Plot samples began in 1995 to measure bark beetle outbreaks and peaked in the early 2000’s. Most trees (98.5%) were killed by bark beetles before the fire began. To sample plots, bark was tested from every tree taller than 1.4 m and analyzed using Spearman’s rank correlation test between each quantitative metric of fire severity and beetle-killed area in all plots.

Harvey, Brian J., et al. “Influence of recent bark beetle outbreak on fire severity and postfire tree regeneration in montane Douglas‐fir forests.” Ecology 94.11 (2013): 2475-2486.

The article titled, The Economic Impact of Ocean Acidification on Shellfish Production in Europe, is unique in the sense that very little research has been done regarding economic impacts of ocean acidification. Given that all shelled marine organisms and coral reefs are dependent on calcium carbonate, used to form their hard surfaces, which is depleted by carbonic acid it is imperative to start looking at the economic effects on the seafood industry as well as the tourism industry. Europe and its nearby regions are significant producers of mollusks and in this case, economic data from mollusk fisheries needed to be obtained and analyzed to determine any economic downfalls that correspond with the beginning of the significant rise in the ocean’s acidity. They chose to perform a partial-equilibrium analysis to determine the highest levels of overall impact. They determined that the countries with the highest production rates, France, Italy and Spain, are being impacted the greatest. That being said, it was also noted that the distribution of impact is rather uneven across countries, with the most affected areas being those along the Atlantic coast of France which is a region of great importance for oyster production. Their economic analysis led them to determine that the annual impact will be over 1 billion USD in 2100 for Europe as a whole, which is extremely significant. This research is both substantial and well done, and will hopefully demonstrate to others in the field that economic analysis is crucial to getting corporations to reduce their carbon dioxide emissions. Ocean acidification is a severe issue that is rarely discussed when talking about climate change, and I hope that readers will consider the ways in which their consumption habits are producing carbon dioxide and acknowledge that it is taking a severe toll on our oceans and the marine life that many depend on for sustenance. 

Narita, Daju, Rehdanz, Katrin, The Economic Impact of Ocean Acidification on Shellfish Production in Europe. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, pp 500-518. 

In the article Measures of Social and Emotional Skills for Children and Young People: A Systematic Review, the authors are trying to see the different skills that children and young people have using a systematic review. The authors describe the different social and emotional skills, which could be seen as a combination of social and emotional intelligence, emotional literacy, and social and emotional competence. The authors then began to set up the systematic review process, which contained six stages. Stage one and two relate to the identification of different measures, which could be terms or key words that have to do with social or emotional skills. Stage three resulted in reading a specific abstract and then creating a inclusion and exclusion criteria based off what the authors could use. Stages four and five resulted in the finding of more articles and filtering them out to only use the most needed material. The last stage, stage six, is the final examination of all the final measures. There were some limitations to the systematic process, with one limitation being that there are many different interpretations to social and emotional skills, so agreeing of a common definition can be difficult. However, the most important part of the study is finding the precise keywords and the precise question to get the specific results needed for the study. This article shows many emotional and social skills that could be relevant to looking at graduation rate, as some skills could be linked to success in school.

Humphrey, Neil, Afroditi Kalambouka, Michael Wigelsworth, Ann Lendrum, Jessica Deighton, and Uganda Wolpert. “Measures of Social and Emotional Skills for Children and Young People: A Systematic Review.” Educational and Psychological Measurement Volume 71 no. 4 (2011):617-637.

“Democratizing Primary Spiritual Experience-Around the Year 2000” by Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D. asked why entheogen’s, a psychoactive substance that is primarily used in a religious or spiritual context, offer religions? The article states that the application is not simply ‘dropping acid’ rather they are developed in a manner that paralleled medical research practices. The research required demographic data to obtain a firmer understanding of psychoactive drugs and the cultures surrounding their religious use. In order to achieve his goal the author performed experiments using experience’s as they present themselves to consciousness.  The author analyzed this data using quantitative analysis.  I believe that the research provided a unique insight into our religion and its subjectivity in part due to varying mental faculties. These experiments despite subjectivity yielded incredible results including that 1/3 of all participants in the experiments experienced on of the five most meaningful experiences of their life. In addition, psilocybin mushrooms increased participant’s altruism and senses of well-being. The issue that I found with the research methodology is that it failed to examine the cultural aspect of regions that use psychoactive drugs to experience spirituality. For instance, drugs like Ayahuasca are conducted in large spiritual ceremonies which last several hours, with little frequency and are often heavily emotionally taxing. The areas of the research that I found myself most interested in are the fields like drug induced contemplation, and his deep analysis of religious texts that observe various levels of religious understanding the deepest being one’s primary religious experience. This claim argues that even though primary experience provides a deeper understanding they also do not dilute the importance of habitual religious activity.

Roberts, Thomas. Democratizing Primary Spiritual Experience-Around the Year 2000” Association for Transpersonal Psychology 48. 1 (2016): 28-32.

In the article “Understanding Transgender Identity Development in Childhood and Adolescence”, Dr. Boskey argues for the inclusion of gender identity topics in U.S sex education curriculum and provides different manners in which trans issues could be incorporated into current sex education standards. Although some states in the U.S, including California, now include conversations about sexuality in a positive light, while others mention sexuality but only in a negative light, sex education curriculum is lacking information on trans and gender identity issues in all states.

In the past this lack of representation in Sex Ed curriculum has been to understandings of youth’s identifications as trans as minimal and scarce, however Dr. Boskey argues the data supporting these understandings are often under representing the actual population of trans youth. She sites a study by Schreier, Moller, Li, and Romer, stating that 6% of young boys and 12% of young girls exhibit cross-gender behavior. She approximates that given the census of 316 million in the U.S in 2013, about 1.5 to 6 million Americans identify as transgender.

Dr. Boskey continues to argue that trans issues are not new and are very rarely addressed in school, although individuals identifying off the gender binary are more susceptible to emotional disorders, negative self-imagery, trauma, and abuse. By providing gender identification sections within sex education curriculum and self-image/ beauty curriculum already present in sex ed, for youth attending K-12 public schools, curriculum should promote compassionate and understanding toward their non-conforming peers in order to stem bullying and trauma, and body positive curriculum for  trans youth and cis-youth. While talking about gender identity educators would also have the opportunity to discuss the prevalence of gender roles that may adversely affect both men, women, and non-binary youth.

Children become aware of gender as young as the age of 2 and thus gender should be brought into a dialogue in a age appropriate lessons by elementary school and kindergarten. By middle school, when most students will begin the process of puberty, gender issues are especially important, as puberty can be a very traumatic, dysphoric, and stressful time for students who are non-binary conforming to go through, whilst also not receiving any formal acknowledgment of their struggles or any information or support from their academic mentors.

Dr. Boskey concludes that trans issues are not only important and necessary to the growing population of non-binary identifying students, but also broach issues important to cis and heterosexual youth about gender roles, puberty, bullying, and sexuality.

Boskey, Elizabeth. Understanding Transgender Identity Development in Childhood and Adolescence. American Journal of Sexuality Education. (Taylor and Francis, 2014.)

This journal article highlights numerous issues in China, namely the effect of foreign exchange reserves (the amount of foreign currencies held in China) on domestic inflation. The authors argue that higher foreign reserves lead to higher domestic inflation, and this inflation has a variety of internal socio-economic effects on different demographics. The article attempts to conclude that the Chinese government’s approach to maintaining domestic stability is based off short-term benefit: to avoid sudden and disruptive change/events, the government chose a gradual currency appreciation policy instead of a one-time big appreciation policy. The authors perform a cost-benefit analysis that explains how steady inflation (a consequence of gradual currency appreciation) is more favorable to the public than sudden rises in unemployment (a consequence of a one-time big appreciation policy). This choice according to the authors underlines the often-overlooked political factors that are relevant when analyzing economies. The authors presented much economic and organizational data in a quantitative fashion that they collected from public records, such as data from the People’s Bank of China and the National Bureau of Statistics of China. The authors use examples of past Chinese monetary policy to support their claim (interest rates, reserve requirements and open market operations) as well as their own statistical regressions. Their statistical methods were respectable in that they acknowledged the difference between inference and fact—they in no way claimed their statistics were true and admitted that their models only worked in certain conditions (even though the numbers support their claims). What I most appreciated about this article was the emphasis on scrutiny that welcomes discussion and debate. The authors also underlined hidden social behaviors that influence domestic affairs, specifically the “catching up with the Joneses” effect, which I think would be interesting to other students of sociology.

Cheng, Tun-Jen, and Xuan Liu. “Foreign exchange reserves: a new challenge to China.” Journal of Post Keynesian Economics 35, no. 4 (Summer, 2013): 621-50. doi:10.2753/pke0160-3477350406.