This article was found in the NWSA Journal, and was written by Thomas Ricks, a research scholar on Iranian and Palestinian history. The full article is cited as:

Ricks, Thomas M. 2006. “In Their Own Voices: Palestinian High School Girls and Their Memories

of the Intifadas and Nonviolent Resistance to Israeli Occupation, 1987 to 2004.” NWSA

            Journal 18 (3): 88-103. Doi: 10.1353/nwsa.2006.0059.

Ricks interviews 17 and 18 year old Palestinian high school girls to detail their experiences in Palestine post-Intifadas. His objective is to reveal the hardships faced by Palestinians in their daily lives as a result of Israeli occupation. His data types are reports of acts, behaviors, and events and deeply held opinions and attitudes. To collect this qualitative data, he uses in-depth interviews (oral histories) and private records (school diaries). This article is credible because it was written in a peer-reviewed journal by a researcher with extensive knowledge on Palestine. Ricks’ interviews were interesting to me because he chose to interview young women, which is not a demographic that most Middle Eastern researchers report on. This may be interesting to my classmates because it details how women have led a resistance against violence, which is a cause that is highly publicized in our own country at the present.

In regard to my seven categories of challenges that American farmers and rancher face today, Ryanne Pilgeram and Bryan Amos’ article “Beyond ‘Inherit It or Marry It’: Exploring How Women Engaged in Sustainable Agriculture Access Farmland,” in Rural Sociology, Volume 80, Issue 1, presented me with a new category to consider: gender inequality. Pilgeram and Amos explore the ways in which female farmers obtain their land. After a brief literature review in which they outline the history of female farmers and today’s population of female sustainable farmers, they ask the question, “What are the different ways that women engaged in sustainable agriculture access farmland and how are those pathways to access affected by specific economic and cultural moments?” (Pilgeram and Amos 22).

Pilgeram and Amos selected a population of 40 female sustainable farmers in “Sunset County.” They compiled this population through online resources and speaking with stakeholders and farmers’ market managers in the region. Feeling confident that they had a list of all of the female sustainable farmers in the county, Pilgeram and Amos sent letters and emails to all members of the population asking for their participation. Of the 40 population members, they were able to obtain a sample size of 17 women with whom they would conduct in-depth, semi structured interviews with. After conducting the interviews (either over the phone or on the farms), Pilgeram and Amos utilized NVivo software to code and transcribe their responses and field notes. They then used cross-tabulations to analyze the patterns that were present.

They discovered that there were three main themes in how these women obtained their land: “Access through Marriage,” “Access Later in Life through Personal Savings and Retirement,” and “Land Access as Young Women with a Male Partner.” There were clear patterns of age groups within each of these categories. Those who gained access through marriage are the oldest group of women, and those who gained land access with an equal partner are the youngest group. Patterns regarding access to other important things were also present. Those who were able to be an equal partner in the land access had more access to time, education, and their own money than those who obtained their land through marriage.

This study presented me with a new category of challenges that today’s farmers and ranchers face. It was interesting to read about the increased number of female, sustainable farmers and the different groups within this category. It is clear that there is inequality among these female farmers as some have more access to other important things such as education, time and money that benefit their farming lifestyles.

Pilgeram, Ryanne. Amos, Bryan. 2015. “Beyond ‘Inherit It or Marry It’: Exploring How Women Engaged in Sustainable Agriculture Access Farmland.” Rural Sociology80(1): 16-38. Retrieved March 25, 2018. (http://web.a.ebscohost.com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=7&sid=c3235d15-40c5-4a9b-a1b7-9eb374975f83%40sessionmgr4008)

The research article I selected for research example number five is an article I found in the Armacost library database. The article from the Journal of Environmental Health volume 71, number 4. The title of the article is “Microbial Water Quality and Influences of Fecal Accumulation from a Dog Exercise Area.” Animal wastes such as contamination from animal agriculture have been known to cause outbreaks of waterborne diseases. Dogs and other animals are potential sources of waterborne diseases. Frequently used dogs parks with a lot of dog fecal matter could potentially contaminate surface waters. The authors examined the effects of areas with a large amount of fecal material in a popular dog exercise park. The dog exercise area is located in the Burke Creek recreational area in State Line Nevada adjacent to Lake Tahoe. The public drinking water supply is approximately 200 meters from the creek outlet. Over a period of fourteen months. The authors analyzed water samples from the creek for E. coli and collected feces from areas to estimate the amount of fecal accumulation. Over the fourteen-month period an estimated total of over 100 pounds of fecal material had accumulated in the area. The method of study consisted of mapping the area with constant collection of fecal material and water sampling. The goal of the study was to discover any trends in and to find any correlation between the amount of fecal material and E. coli in the surface waters.  The authors found that there was no correlation between the amount of fecal material accumulated and the amount of E. coli found in the water. It appeared that during a good portion of the year the E. coli bacteria did not survive long enough to enter the surface water. The authors also conclude that it would still be beneficial to educate dog owners and to encourage to pick up after their dogs. This would prevent increasing the potential risk of contaminating surface waters from fecal material.

Garfield, L., & Walker, M. (2008). “Microbial water quality and influences of fecal accumulation from a dog exercise area”. Journal of environmental health, 71(4), 24.

Research Example 5

This peer reviewed article is called “Learning to Think Critically, A Visual Art Experiment”. The article talks about research done to test weather students who were exposed to art, could engage better in critical thinking.  To do this research a trial was conducted, where some of the students were told to participate in a school program at an art museum, while others were not. The findings of this research showed that students who participated in the school art visit, were much stronger critical thinkers.

The topic of this article is art and its relationship to education/intelligence. The question posed is, “are students who are exposed to art, able to think more critically than students with no art exposure?”

In order to test this question, you would need deep opinions/attitudes as well as expert knowledge data.

You would need to run the data by an expert who knows specifically about art and its association with critical thinking, specifically who could figure out if the art was affect the students thinking. You would also need to test the students (through learning there deeply held opinions and attitudes), to figure out if they are stronger critical thinkers after being exposed or not exposed to art.

After collecting all the data, you could analyze it by coding! See what categories matched with art and intellect/critical thinking, and draw conclusions from that.

I think this is really cool research. I personally believe that art can drastically affect intellect! I like how this study tries to use science to make a claim.

This would be a primary source because the information they tested was obtained first hand.

Bibliography

Bowen, D., Greene, J., & Kisida, B. (2014). Learning to Think Critically. Educational Researcher, 43(1), 37–44. doi:10.3102/0013189X13512675

The article I chose to use for this exercise can be found on Environmental Health Perspectives, it is titled “GIS Modeling of Air Toxics Releases from TRI- Reporting and Non-TRI-Reporting Facilities: Impacts for Environmental Justice”. This article was written by Dana C. Dolinoy and Marie Lynn Miranda.

I chose this article because I was looking for methods on how to use geographical information systems to measure environmental justice. As I read through the article I came to realize that there wasn’t a clear way of how the project used demographics and environmental justice (air quality) data to map a correlation between the two. I decided to continue using the article because it contained helpful information about the Census Bureau and how data like air quality is estimated in order to create a map.

To begin, the Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) require facilities to report the chemical releases of the year annually, but there is an issue when monitoring the total number of released toxics when non- TRI reporting facilities don’t report. This relates to my project because there might be pesticide use that goes unreported; how can I measure this to create and accurate map? Having the tools needed to measure the exact levels of toxicity lets the research team find correlations. For example, in 1990, 80% of Hispanics lived in counties that exceeded on of the criteria of air pollutant standards the federal government set. This project used demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau to collect data on ethnicity, poverty, household income, and percentage of children in poverty in Durham County, North Carolina. When I came up with my research question I was confused as to how I should map out certain demographics, it turns out the census Bureau information can be broken into different geographic scales: ZIP code, tracts, block groups, and blocks. Furthermore, TRI data must be collected and reported to the Environmental Protection Agency; the project had TRI facility locations geocoded (latitude and longitude coordinates) and mapped. There are 874 TRI sites releasing more than 126 million pounds of contaminates in the air in Durham County. Non- TRI reports were extracted from marketing directories; there are 400 non- TRI reporting facilities.

Dolinoy, D. C., & Miranda, M. L. (2004). GIS modeling of air toxics releases from TRI-reporting and non-TRI-reporting facilities: impacts for environmental justice. Environmental health perspectives, 112(17), 1717.

The article that I found for this Research Example focuses on two of my categories of challenges that American farmers and ranchers face today – changing demands of consumers and economic influences.  While the article focuses on an entire rural community, there is some mention of the ranches that formally comprised most of the town. In the online records of Rural Sociology, I found an article that had yet to be included in any printed volume of the journal. The article, “’Not Allowed to Inherit My Kingdom’: Amenity Development and Social Inequality in the Rural West” by Jennifer Sherman outlines the changing social scene in the rural town of Paradise Valley, Washington. Originally and lumber and ranching town, the area has become a hotspot for tourists, second home owners, and outdoor recreation. Sherman focuses on how the locals have had to adapt to a changing social scene as their rural home has been influenced by a changing economy and the changing demands of tourists.

Sherman utilized ethnography and descriptive research as she studied those in Paradise Valley for 10 months, conducting 84 in-depth interviews during that time. She obtained her sample through advertisement, gift card incentives, and snowball sampling. She wanted to be sure to interview individuals from all backgrounds but wanted to focus mostly on locals and those from lower economic status. Her goal was to understand how the influx of tourists has changed the rural community. She asked questions about all aspects of the interviewees personal lives and conducted the interviews in their homes or in local parks, cafes, or restaurants. After conducting her interviews, Sherman utilized the software NVivo to analyze and code her transcriptions.  She coded the interviews for various themes that came up consistently across different interviews.

Sherman found that the increase of seasonal tourists played a troubling role in the lives of locals. Those who had originally owned ranches and made a living through forest services and other outdoor professions began losing their lands as they were dedicate to tourist attractions and activities. The local economic scene changed from small, family owned businesses to large chains and tourist-based corporations. The social dynamics changed as well as the rich, urban, tourists began to outnumber the original local, close-knit community. The influx of outsiders raised the price of homes and land and began to drive out those who were living in Paradise Valley for several generations. There has been an increase in jobs, but only seasonal ones which do not provide substantial income during the low-tourist seasons. This article provided a look inside how the tourist businesses can negatively affect local farmers and ranchers. It was an example of the economic and social challenges these people face.

Sherman, Jennifer. 2017. “’Not Allowed to Inherit My Kingdom’: Amenity Development and
Social Inequality in the Rural West.” Rural Sociology(Online). Retrieved March 19, 2018. https://onlinelibrary-wiley-com.ezproxy.redlands.edu/doi/full/10.1111/ruso.12168

For this week, I had a bit of a difficult time finding an article through the library database, so I turned to other ways of finding articles. I used backtracking to find a really interesting article that relates directly to my research question and might be able to help me better develop my proposal. The article is call “An epigenetic mechanism links socioeconomic status to changes in depression-related brain functions in high-risk adolescents” by J. R. Swartz, A. R. Hariri, and D. E. Williamson. The article investigates the biological factors behind the development of mental illness and how life stressors can trigger them more readily in certain people, depending on their situation.  Specifically, it previously had been found that increased risk for developing a mental illness due to life stressors can be triggered through methylation of gene regulatory regions, which results in epigenetic modification of gene expression. With this information in mind, the authors asked “is differential gene methylation a function of adversity that contributes to the emergence of individual risk for mental illness?”. They used the neuroimaging and behavioral data of 132 adolescents. It was found that lower socioeconomic status during childhood is related to an increase in methylation of the serotonin transporter gene. This causes the amygdala to be more sensitive and exhibit more threat-related activity, which increases risk for depression. It was also found that there is an association between increases in this type of activity from the amygdala due to life stressors and having a  family history of depression. The article states that “these initial results suggest a specific biological mechanism through which adversity contributes to altered brain function, which in turn moderates the emergence of general liability as individual risk for mental illness.”.

Swartz, J. R., Hariri, A. R., Williamson, D. E. (2017). An Epigenetic Mechanism Links Socioeconomic Status to Changes in Depression-Related Brain Function in High-Risk Adolescents. Molecular Psychiatry. (Vol. 22, pp. 209-214.)

I focused my article on mental illness and people who receive low incomes rather than focusing strictly on the homeless population. My article is titled, “The Association Between Income Inequality and Mental Health: Testing Status Anxiety, Social Capital, and Neo-Materialist Explanations” in the journal “European Sociological Review.” The article was written by Richard Layte

Layte, Richard. “The Association Between Income Inequality and Mental Health: Testing Status Anxiety, Social Capital, and Neo-Materialist Explanations.” European Sociological Review 28, no. 4 (2012): 498-511. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.redlands.edu/stable/23272534.

This article focuses on how ones income may affect their mental stability and state. The author created a series of 3 hypotheses that he wanted to test to see if any of them played  a factor in mental stability. For example, status anxiety to see if people who were in a lower income bracket had anxiety about their social status since they could not afford the same things/stress about money. The research question being asked is, “Does one’s income affect their mental state?” To test his theories the author would have to use two different types of data. He would use economic data and psychological trait data. To gather economic data that would require looking at records and acquiring someone’s current financial situation. To gather psychological data this would require in depth interviews and potentially surveys. To analyze this data one would use interval data for economic data and qualitative data for psychological data.

It has been established by many articles that coral bleaching is not stopping but increasing. Which means that coral reef mortality is increasing also. Why the survival of coral reefs and bleaching are related is because coral reef bleaching means the loss of symbiotic algae. At a specific temperature the algae helping coral survive die. As a result, the coral reef stops tissue growth, skeletal growth, and reproduction because the algae are the reefs source of nutrition. The reefs can survive a brief bleaching because their larvae would not have died off. The increase of coral reef mortality is an important issue because these reefs are home and the food source to schools of big and little fish. Once a reef dies and starts to break down, the fish move to different coral reefs or die off also. The fishing moving or dying affects humans greatly. Without fish,  these issues will continue to become worse until the reef recovers but that could happen in a century or two. Climate change is huge reason why the coral reefs are dying but is not the only reason, El Niño or La Niña, marine protection, fisheries, and the rising baseline of water temperatures. Also, the increase of CO₂ emissions because it affects the skeletal growth of coral. In this article, “Coral Bleaching and Global Climate Change: Scientific Finding and Policy Recommendation,” the researchers implore for more research because the reefs would be able to survive climate change if they are able to acclimate to the rising heat. If there is more research than they will have better ideas on how to make conservation management policy better. Interestingly, the researchers suggest a better policy to reduce CO₂ emission. These policies will benefit coastal communities because bleaching affects the livelihood of those communities that rely on fish for subsistence or income either as food or tourism because fish rely on coral reefs to survive.

Reaser, J. K., Pomerance, R., and Thomas, P. O. (2000) Coral Bleaching and Global Climate Change: Scientific Finding and Policy Recommendations. Conservation Biology, 14(5):1500-1511.

It is predicted that in 30 years we will have lost 70% of our coral reefs. The loss of our coral reefs affects our fisheries, tourism, medicine, and many other aspects of our lives. Coral reefs are the ecosystem of the ocean, without it the ocean slowly dies. Thus, we need to protect our reefs. There has been a lot of debate on paper about what is the best way to protect our marine life from dying, but there has not been much applying those theories discussed to real coral reefs. In this article, “Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change,” discusses the pros of the already established marine protected area (MPA) networks to help future designers figure out what aspects of the established MPA’s would be best for theirs. This article is interesting because the researchers focus of these designs is how these areas will make the reefs more adaptable or resilient to climate change. A designer can do everything else perfectly but if their main goal isn’t resiliency, those reefs will die with the quickly rising water temperatures. Resilience equals “reefs ecosystem’s ability to recover from a disturbance, to maintain the dominance of hard corals, and/or to maintain morphological diversity as opposed to shifting to an algal-dominated state or a single coral morphology (McLeod, Salm, Green, and Almany, 2009, pg. 363).” The requirements for a well established MPA network are size (10-20 km), shape (square or rectangle), risk spreading, critical areas, connectivity, ecosystem function, and ecosystem management. The size of the area should be at least 10 to 20 km, and the shape should be a basic one like a square or rectangle. Risk spreading means at least three coral species need to be protected and their larvae can spread out easily. The critical areas that need to be protected are nurseries and spawning areas because those corals will have a better chance of surviving and they are the future. While the other three categories focus on protecting the ecosystems that can connect well with others and will be able to maintain ecosystem function under duress. The reefs that are going to be protected need to be resilient or MPA are not worth the effort because climate change will kill off all the reefs.

McLeod, E., Salm, R., Green, A, and Almany, J. (2009). Designing marine protected area networks to address the impacts of climate change. Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, 7(7): 362-370.