Evaluating the Success of Forest Restoration

Forest restoration projects are occurring throughout the world. Restoration projects can vary greatly depending on the type of forest and the type of stressors that have caused ecosystem degradation and the need for restoration. Because of this variability, and because objective criteria for determining the success of restoration projects are lacking, it is difficult to evaluate the overall success of forest restoration projects. Using ecological standards developed for river restoration as a model, a similar set of standards was applied to forest restoration projects. The standards put forward can be used to evaluate the success of ecosystem restoration universally through the use of site-specific indicators of ecological success. This analysis found that many but not all of the criteria are being used to evaluate forest restoration success. Furthermore, the ecological health of the restored ecosystem is not always prioritized, as socioeconomic values are occasionally favored. Thus, it is important for a set of evaluation criteria primarily related to ecological health to be readily accepted by forest restoration practitioners

Pituophis ruthveni

Number of Pages: 16Geological SciencesIntegrative Biolog

Deformed Quantum Cohomology and (0,2) Mirror Symmetry

We compute instanton corrections to correlators in the genus-zero topological subsector of a (0,2) supersymmetric gauged linear sigma model with target space P1xP1, whose left-moving fermions couple to a deformation of the tangent bundle. We then deduce the theory's chiral ring from these correlators, which reduces in the limit of zero deformation to the (2,2) ring. Finally, we compare our results with the computations carried out by Adams et al.[ABS04] and Katz and Sharpe[KS06]. We find immediate agreement with the latter and an interesting puzzle in completely matching the chiral ring of the former.Comment: AMSLatex, 30 pages, one eps figure. V4: typos corrected, final version appearing in JHE

Foraging ecology and reproductive biology of Cassin's Auklet (Ptychoramphus A. aleuticus) in the California Channel Islands

by Josh Adams."A thesis presented to the faculty of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories."Thesis (M.S.) -- San Francisco State University, 2004."A thesis presented to the faculty of Moss Landing Marine Laboratories.

A-twisted heterotic Landau-Ginzburg models

In this paper, we apply the methods developed in recent work for constructing A-twisted (2,2) Landau-Ginzburg models to analogous (0,2) models. In particular, we study (0,2) Landau-Ginzburg models on topologically non-trivial spaces away from large-radius limits, where one expects to find correlation function contributions akin to (2,2) curve corrections. Such heterotic theories admit A- and B-model twists, and exhibit a duality that simultaneously exchanges the twists and dualizes the gauge bundle. We explore how this duality operates in heterotic Landau-Ginzburg models, as well as other properties of these theories, using examples which RG flow to heterotic nonlinear sigma models as checks on our methods.Comment: 31 pages, LaTe

AI Design and Policy for Education

The increasing availability and testing of Artificial Intelligence in Education (AIED) is highlighting the concurrent gap and demand for ethical design and use. This paper proposes the design thinking framework for use in AI design. Design thinking inverts the current AI development process which builds the AI application first, then looks to apply this to human problems. In contrast, the human-centred focus of design thinking in AI development places empathy and agency with users and marginalised or affected parties at the heart of the design process. Design thinking shifts the dominant discourse from the technological merits of AI development to the merits of the AI design for the needs and interests of ākonga (students) and kaiako (teachers), as defined by them. It ensures that AI tools are not just those that are feasible but desirable from end-users’ perspectives. By applying design thinking principles, the AI applications are intrinsically aligned to ākonga needs. We consider design thinking to be grounded in consideration of human-centric ethical and cultural influences that shape educational technology uptake in Aotearoa New Zealand

Masses, radii, and orbits of small Kepler planets : The transition from gaseous to rocky planets

We report on the masses, sizes, and orbits of the planets orbiting 22 Kepler stars. There are 49 planet candidates around these stars, including 42 detected through transits and 7 revealed by precise Doppler measurements of the host stars. Based on an analysis of the Kepler brightness measurements, along with high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy, Doppler spectroscopy, and (for 11 stars) asteroseismology, we establish low false-positive probabilities (FPPs) for all of the transiting planets (41 of 42 have an FPP under 1%), and we constrain their sizes and masses. Most of the transiting planets are smaller than three times the size of Earth. For 16 planets, the Doppler signal was securely detected, providing a direct measurement of the planet's mass. For the other 26 planets we provide either marginal mass measurements or upper limits to their masses and densities; in many cases we can rule out a rocky composition. We identify six planets with densities above 5 g cm-3, suggesting a mostly rocky interior for them. Indeed, the only planets that are compatible with a purely rocky composition are smaller than 2 R ⊕. Larger planets evidently contain a larger fraction of low-density material (H, He, and H2O).Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Leadership Initiatives International Public Health Internship Program

In a nine-month internship for Leadership Initiatives, our team worked together to develop and implement an international public health campaign to address major health concerns prevalent in the region of Bauchi State, Nigeria. Our topic was the issue of selfmedication and its effects among the community. We launched a campaign to collect survey data and develop an educational workshop for the project.https://scholarworks.moreheadstate.edu/celebration_posters_2023/1030/thumbnail.jp

5 Year Update to the Next Steps in Quantum Computing

It has been 5 years since the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) Workshop on Next Steps in Quantum Computing, and significant progress has been made in closing the gap between useful quantum algorithms and quantum hardware. Yet much remains to be done, in particular in terms of mitigating errors and moving towards error-corrected machines. As we begin to transition from the Noisy-Intermediate Scale Quantum (NISQ) era to a future of fault-tolerant machines, now is an opportune time to reflect on how to apply what we have learned thus far and what research needs to be done to realize computational advantage with quantum machines