In the article Climate Change and Sex Determination by Stephanie J. Kamel she talks about how the warming temperatures can affect sea turtles. Sea turtles are very sensitive reptiles and the temperature, location and when they are born is very important. These factors determine what sex the turtle is. During the middle part of a turtle’s incubation is when the sex of the turtle is determined. This all depends on the temperature of the egg at that time. If the temperature is higher, then the turtle will be female and if the temperature is lower, then the turtle will be male. Scientists are worried that if the temperatures get too high there will be less and less male turtles that are being reproduced. The topic of this article was about climate change and the determination of sex for sea turtles. The research question being answered in this article was, how will climate change effect the outcome of the sex of turtles? The data collection method used in this article was acts, behaviors and events. The method of analysis was quantitative data because the scientists were dealing with the numbers of turtles that were female vs. male.

I thought this article was very well written and was scientific with no bias opinions in the article. The author also made it easy enough to understand so that you did not need to have a science background to read it. I thought it was very interesting that the sex of the turtles is determined by the temperature of the egg at that incubation period.

Kamel, Stephanie J. “Verification Required.” Armacost Library. N.p., 2008. Web. 12 Feb. 2017. <http://0-www.accessscience.com.books.redlands.edu/content/climate-change-and-sex-determination/YB081550>.

Simulated seasonal variations in nitrogen wet deposition over East Asia was written by Jin-Hui Yu, Mel-Gen Zhang and Jia-Linv Li. http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/16742834.2015.1136782 

The purpose of this study was to simulate the rain fall patterns in China and to measure where the most nitrogen and sulfur pollutants were falling though out the country and see if there was a difference depending on what season it is. In this study the researchers focused more in the amount of nitrogen wet amounts, which refers to the amount of nitrogen in precipitation like rain or snow. In order to be able to observe this the researchers applied the regional air quality modeling system Regional Atmospheric Modeling System–Community Multiscale Air Quality to estimate the spatial distribution and seasonal variation in nitrogen wet deposition over East Asia, though the article tends to concentrate more on China. “The simulated results were evaluated by comparing modeled precipitation rates and ion concentrations, such as ammonium , nitrate, and sulfate, in rainwater, against observations obtained from Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia and [weather stations] in China” (Jin-Hui Yu, Zhang, Li).

Once they had collected the data the researchers compared their modeled data to what they observed using the weather station and found that modeling system reproduces fairly accurate seasonal precipitation patterns.  Analysis of the modeled wet deposition distributions indicated that China experiences noticeable variation in wet deposition patterns throughout the year.

This study was conduced because even though many nitrogen deposition measurement programs have been launched in China since the 1980s the fluxes in nitrogen wet deposition were calculated only by using a few sites. A systematic nationwide monitoring network to obtain nitrogen deposition distribution data is absent in China, leading to insufficient information on regional-scale nitrogen deposition. These measurements were much fewer than those of the United States and most European countries so these researchers sought to try and fix this issue but doing a more accurate and modern measurement.

The type of data used to learn how much variation there was between a model and observed rain fall was through a report of and act and an actually action taken, which was to go to a weather station and observe the amounts of nitrogen in that rain. This research would be useful to see how various air currents effect the amounts of acid rain around the country and to better understand how much of the unnaturally present nitrogen in the surrounding countries is actually from China and not a product of their own actions. This could also be useful to compare with older data around similar topics to see if there is a correlation between them.

Yu, Jin-Hai, Mei-Gen Zhang, and Jia-Lin Li. “Simulated Seasonal Variations in Nitrogen Wet Deposition over East Asia.” Atmospheric and Oceanic Science Letters 9.2 (2016): 99-106. Web.

The article Some Begging is Actually Bragging, written by Douglas W. Mock in Nature, is about a research study done on one hundred forty-three bird species to examine parental responses to chicks’ begging signals. The researchers hypothesized that the parents would feed the offspring that begged the most, but they also had interests to see whether the larger/healthier offspring were given any special attention due to a sense of bragging. Mock described this with two different models: the signal-of-need model which meant that the parents would feed the offspring that needed it most, first, and then there was the signal-of-quality model which explained that the parents would favor and focus their attention on the stronger offspring. During research, environmental features such as the quality and predictability of food supply for each species were taken into consideration. In the end, researchers found that both models were represented. In environments, where food was predictable and essential, parents would feed all offspring equally, and then focus on the weaker ones so as to bring them to size. On the other hand, where there were volatile conditions, parents often preferred the stronger offspring.

For this type of research, the topic was chicks’ begging signals, and the question was to find the different variations of parental responses to the begging. To answer this question, the type of data needed is acts, behavior or events and the data collection method is detached observation. To analyze this data, researchers formed their observations into categorical data; that is, they grouped their findings into the different models of need or quality (begging or bragging). These were then compared to each other based on surrounding environments.

I believe that this research study was well conducted and resulted in some interesting findings. If further research was to be done, I think it would be interesting to find if there were other significant factors that correlated with a parent’s response to the begging or bragging.

Mock, Douglas W. “Animal behaviour: Some begging is actually bragging.” Nature 532.7598 (2016): 180-81. Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

Snow Temperature Changes within a Seasonal Snowpack and Their Relationship to Turbulent Fluxes of Sensible and Latent Heat

Sean P. Burns, Noah P. Molotch, Mark W. Williams, John F. Knowles, Brian Seok, Russell K. Monson, Andrew A. Turnipseed, and Peter D. Blanken

Snowpack in alpine regions is a critical reservoir for water storage. The warming climate is affecting the amount of snow in these areas and the timing for when that snow melts. High elevation areas are particularly vulnerable to changes in the climate. In order to better understand how specific changes in the climate will affect snowpack a better understanding of how energy moves through the snowpack is required. Snowpack’s within forested areas add and an additional level of complexity when investigating heat transfer. The tree canopy blocks incoming shortwave radiation from the sun and shades the snow pack. Trees enhance longwave radiation cooling during the night when shortwave radiation diminishes. Trees also shelter the snowpack from the wind, which decreases changes in temperature at the surface of the snow. Heat is transferred through a snowpack primarily by conduction through the ice crystals. The ice crystals are in contact with one another, allowing heat to transfer from one crystal to another. Changes in snow temperature in a snow pack equate to changes in snow crystal structure. Rapid fluctuations in temperatures can alter the snow grains and affect snowpack cohesion.

This article investigated the changes to internal snowpack temperatures and possible triggers for intensified snowpack warming prior to spring melt. The researchers used ratio data in the form of acts, behaviors, and events collected primarily at the Niwot Ridge Subalpine Forest AmeriFlux site in Colorado. Reports of acts, behaviors, and events in the form of meteorological data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration was collected as well as data from corresponding studies. Quantitative analysis using equations was used to compare a wide range of variables from snow and soil temperatures to snowpack properties, energy fluxes, wind, and aspect. These were graphed and the information that was collected to describe environmental conditions that could create the conditions required for a warm u event.

One of the conclusions that were made was that “If air with a dewpoint temperature near the snow surface temperature is present, water vapor can condense on the snow surface releasing latent heat and causing the snowpack temperature to rapidly warm.” This article was strong in its evaluation of its own practices and its understanding of the limitations of its conclusions. However, describing the environmental conditions that could create scenarios with similar warm up potential demonstrated the scope the research had and the accuracy of its results.

A connection that I found from this research to my own topic was that the high winds triggering dust events could increase turbulent fluxes at the surface of the snow. If fewer trees are present as a consequence of drought and pine beetle (positive feedback loop kills more trees) then snowpack is less sheltered increasing risk of rapid temperature changes. Changes to internal snowpack temperature modify snow crystal structure, which could produce weaker layers increasing the risk of avalanche and increasing melting rate.

 Burns, S. P., Molotch, N. P., Williams, M. W., Knowles, J. F., Seok, B., Monson, R. K., . . . Blanken, P. D. (2014). Snow Temperature Changes within a Seasonal Snowpack and Their Relationship to Turbulent Fluxes of Sensible and Latent Heat. Journal of Hydrometeorology, 15(1), 117-142. doi:10.1175/jhm-d-13-026.1

The article by Gene H. Brody, Zolinda Stoneman, and Alice K. Sanders researched the effects in family interactions while viewing television.  Through an observational study, the researchers viewed twenty-seven middle-class families for twenty minutes.  For the first half families would watch television. With the time remaining, they would play with their children.  The families were selected from a family center located in a community in northeast Georgia. The families were observed in a living room setting through a one-way mirror.  The authors went through this research asking two questions: How do family interactions that characterize television-viewing influence cognitive, language, and social development? and Could it be that television is such a powerful attention-getter that it decreases both verbal and nonverbal communication within the family system? What they found through observing the children was that they talked less and tended to be less active when playing with their family.  They were more likely to touch their mother than father when the television was on.  Through observing the mother they found a large amount of physical contact between them and their children when the television was on. Observing the father they found that they were less likely to smile, talk, and look at their children while the television was on.  An interesting find was that the television was seen as a stimulus for the fathers and children. It also served to change the interactions of the family members to each other.  It would have been interesting if the authors viewed families with different backgrounds instead of focusing on Caucasian middle-class families to see if the interactions differed or stayed the same. 

Brody, Gene H., Zolinda Stoneman, and Alice K. Sanders. “Effects of Television Viewing on Family Interactions: An Observational Study.” Family Relations 29.2 (1980): 216-20. Jstor . Web. 12 Feb. 2017.

I selected an article titled Childhood Asthma and Anthropogenic CO₂ Emissions. The research done for this article attempted to find a link between CO₂ and childhood asthma given that the incidence of childhood asthma has paralleled with the drastic increase in carbon dioxide emissions over the last 20 years, if not longer. The Harvard Medical School and the Center for Health and the Global Environment released a report noting an increase in asthma incidence of 160% among preschool children between 1980 and 1994. Dr. Charles Keeling’s research laboratory in Hawaii conducted analysis of ancient air bubbles trapped by glaciers which revealed that CO₂ in the atmosphere varied from 200 to 300 parts per million for over 80,000 years; in 1980 the levels reached 350 ppm, and are continuously increasing. A CDC-based survey stated that the number of children under 17 years of age with asthma increased from almost 40 to 60 per 1000 individuals between 1980 and 1993.

The author used both expert knowledge and survey data in addition to other reports to gather knowledge to write his article. While the author concluded that the noted increase in asthma is partially a result of carbon dioxide emissions, he acknowledged that there are several other contributing factors all relating to climate change and carbon dioxide. One of the main contributing factors is that greater CO₂ levels in the air hastens the blooming of specific plants; a 2002 study of British plants demonstrated that earlier blooming of plants also releases pollen much earlier than normal. Pollen exposure, like CO₂ emissions, raises that number of documented asthma cases. The author noted that, “As CO₂ levels hypothetically double, the pollen season for oaks will start earlier and concentrations will be 50% higher.” This example shows that while in this case CO₂ emissions are not the primary cause, they affect certain flora that increases the number of asthma cases.

Dosanjh, Amrita. “Childhood Asthma and Anthropogenic CO₂ Emissions”. 4:103–105. 2011 Oct 10. doi: 10.2147/JAA.S24565

In the United States today, there is a growing issue surrounding the field of special education. More and more it is seen that once a student has been placed in special education, their likelihood of being successful in their adult life significantly decrease, especially for those in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas. Whether these two factors have any real relationship or not was taken up and studied by Ashley chesmore Suh-Ruu Ou, and Arthur J. Reynolds. Their goal was to answer two research questions. First, Is childhood placement in special education associated with educational attainment, incarceration, substance misuse and depression in adulthood? Second if there is an association between childhood placement in special education and adult outcomes is it mediated by academic achievement?

To answers these questions, They took a sample of 1,377 low-income minority children, 16 percent of which had some sort of special education between grades 1 through 8. They collected their data through surveys from the child, parent and teacher, school records and other available data. They wanted to test to see if special education had any relationship with depression, incarceration, and substance abuse. They cataloged data on all of those topics, also adding demographic factors of the children and their special education placement and educational attainment. They coded a majority of the data dichotomously using 0 and 1 for each individual answer. Once they collected all of their data they used logistic regression to analyze the dichotomous outcomes and multiple linear regressions to analyze the continuous outcomes.

The conclusions produced from the data did show very strong relationships between special education and the factors in questions. For example children who were placed in special education between grades 4 and 8 were 100% more likely to be incarcerated than those not placed in special education. Similarly, special education students between grades 1 and 8 were 69% more likely to abuse substances during their adult life. But the relationship I found most shocking was that students placed in special education between grades 4 and 8 were 133% more likely to end up depressed in their adult life. All of these are rather disturbing numbers that might make us reconsider how our system of special education is structured.

This research was over all well done, my only critique being the size of their sample. They included such a small sample that it is hard to say that these numbers reflect the entire population of special education students. I would be interested to see what the numbers would look like if the study were to be done and included more school districts of different socioeconomic and racial populations.

Chesmore, A. A., Ou, S., & Reynolds, A. J. (2016). Childhood Placement in Special Education and Adult Well-Being. The Journal of Special Education, 50(2), 109-120. doi:10.1177/0022466915624413

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0022466915624413

International Journal of Sociology and Anthropology

Vol. 5

Why American boys join street gangs

Stanley S. Taylor

http://www.academicjournals.org/journal/IJSA/article-full-text-pdf/837FD2641401

This scholarly journal is about young boys and what drives them to join a gang. But in this specific study they want to look at young boys to see the paths they take and how they end up in a gang. Not a lot of studies have been done on boys and gangs. Most of the studies are when the gang member is already established and is older. The topic for this journal is young boys and joining gangs. The research question is “What are the social factors that a young boy lacks that makes them join a gang”. We want to know what these kids are thinking so the data we need to do this research project are personal feelings because we want to know how these kids felt growing up. We will also use Hidden Social Patterns so we can see what these participants all have in common. The data gathering method they used for this project was in depth interviews. This is the best way to get information for this study. The researcher wants to know about the participants past so this is the best way. The type of Data Analysis method for this journal is qualitative. Each of the respondents were asked a set of open and closed ended questions and they were encouraged to answer freely and clarify anything they wanted to. Overall I think this was good research they did a good job at being specific on what they wanted to find. They were also great at executing the research itself.

The Journal, Poverty and Public Policy featured an article titled, “Progressive State Taxes and Welfare.” The goal of the study is to analyze how progressive tax systems are linked to the number of welfare recipients. There are differing views when it comes to income distribution. Classical fiscal federalism argues that income distribution should happen at the federal level. However, the states also have power in enforcing their own progressive tax systems which support social services, such as welfare. This produces varied tax redistribution based on their goals. The study answered two questions, “First, do progressive tax structures effectively redistribute income? Second, does a progressive tax system reduce the number of welfare caseloads in a state?”

The type of data used was aggregate, “the welfare recipients, state-specific information on Temporary Assistance for Needy Families programs (and Aid to Families with Dependent Children for years prior to 1997), multiple measures of tax progressivity, and demographic variables”– which were from 50 states from the years of 1990 to 2002. The study used two measures to determine state progressivity “the Revenue Distribution Index (RDI) measured by Bahl, Martinez- Vazquez, and Wallace (2002) and the Average Tax Rate Progressivity Index (ATR). “ The method of analysis was through regression equation which was described in the following tables. Table 1 described the demographic variables used, also variables as the control to measure the differences between states TANF programs and the Earned Income Tax Credit. Table 2 includes statistics of 1990 and 2002.

They concluded that there is a positive relationship between a state’s tax progressivity and the number of welfare recipients. These conclusions are significant because we can infer with confidence that a state’s tax policies has great effects. Such as “when a state collects a larger portion of its taxes through historically progressive tax policies, such as personal and corporate income taxes, rather than, for instance, sales taxes, the number of individuals enrolled in the TANF (formerly AFDC) program decreases.”

Smith, Kara D., and Bryan Shone. “Progressive State Taxes and Welfare.” Poverty & Public Policy 8, no. 4 (2016): 430-37. doi:10.1002/pop4.162.

The article titled “Suicide by mass murder: Masculinity, aggrieved entitlement, and rampage school shootings” by Rachel Kalish and Michael Kimmel is found in the Health Sociology Review journal. Kalish and Kimmel state that school shootings typically culminate in suicide and are almost universally committed by males. Kalish and Kimmel examine three recent American cases of rampage school shootings that involve suicide to exemplify how the culture of masculinity creates a sense of aggrieved entitlement that is conducive to violence. Aggrieved entitlement is defined by Kalish and Kimmel as a gendered emotion that centers around the loss of manhood and the moral entitlement to gain it back and seek revenge. The topic of the research is masculinity and its relation to rampage school shootings. The research question Kalish and Kimmel pose is, “How does the culture of masculinity in the U.S. create a sense of entitlement that is conducive to violence?” A case study would successfully answer this research question because the researchers investigate specific examples to show the social factors present in a particular population. The type of data needed for this research are reports of acts, behaviors, events and hidden social patterns to describe the school shootings and how the social factor of a threatened masculinity contributes to violence. The data collection method involves discourse analysis because the researchers examine news magazines and major daily newspapers to reveal the ways in which the perpetrators are shaped by systems of social and cultural power. The data analysis method utilized by Kalish and Kimmel is thematic analysis. Thematic analysis focuses on the themes to find relationships between bullying and violence and tie them to the wider social pattern of a threatened masculinity and rampage school shootings. This qualitative method of research is helpful for my own research on this topic and successfully depicts the social and cultural pressures that males face. The most interesting part of this research is the pattern that depicts how most of the school shootings perpetrated by males had stories of being constantly bullied, beaten up, and labelled homosexual.

 Kalish, R. & Kimmel, M. (2010). Suicide by mass murder: masculinity, aggrieved   entitlement,      and rampage school shootings. Health Sociology Review, 19 (4), 451-464.