Cash Crops Under Glass and Up on the Roof

New York Times;(Late Edition (East Coast)).; New York, N.Y.: May 19, 2011.  pg. B.5

This article discusses the seemingly sudden convergence of intelligent design, hydroponic technologies, greenhouse structures and consumer desire for fresh, locally produced organic vegetables.  A local entrepreneur in Canada created a 30,000 square foot greenhouse on a buildings vacant roof.  Lufa Farms is now selling directly to consumers through their new co-op in Montreal, Canada.

The article discusses similar designs including vertical gardens being developed in skyscrapers.  Another farm built a greenhouse on a grocery store roof in order to sell produce below.  This provides fresh produce and reduces spoilage and transportation costs.  For example;

TerraSphere, a unit of Converted Organics with offices in Surrey, British Columbia, and Boston, designs and builds vertical farm systems and sells its lettuce and spinach through Choices Markets, an organic grocery chain in western Canada.

The critical question becomes whether they can be profitable.  The cost for greenhouse construction on a roof can be $1-$2 million per acre while the operation and maintenance can be considerably less.  Greenhouses do not require tractors or heavy equipment to farm, nor do they need as much fertilizers and pesticides.  The hydroponic systems function without any soil at all.  Currently, New York city is estimated to have 14,000 acres of rooftop space available for farming, which could grown enough produce to feed as many as 20 million people.

BrightFarms has contracted with supermarkets to build multiple greenhouses.  They found with the higher gas costs that the greenroofs' produce usually requires little or no travel.  The reduced travel often drops prices 50%.   Thus, the CEO of BrightFarms, Paul Lightfoot, anticipates "$100 million in revenues by the end of 2015 and $1 billion by the end of 2020."

Why Not the Humanities

Nussbaum, Martha C.. Not for Profit : Why Democracy Needs the Humanities. Princeton, NJ, USA: Princeton University Press, 2010. p 7. Copyright © 2010. Princeton University Press. All rights reserved. 

Martha starts off talking about how the world's education systems are moving to drop art and history since they are useless for the profit driven economy.  Everyone is focused on the science and technical education and nothing else.  I'm reminded of the quote from American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952) who said: "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."  Thus getting rid of the history classes will make it easy for the power that be, no one needs to be creative, but only keep doing the "same-old same-old."

In a democracy that is perfect for the elite who want more war mongering, more greed and more sickness and disparity to promote the first two.  Why else would they promote the machine education to create more mechanical sheeple who engage in production and vegetation.  How appropriate to see Martha go on to issues of the soul, where people are programed to see objects and means to their ends and not people any more.  This goes along with the latin phrase: divide et impera: "Divide and conquer" (from Philip II of Macedon, father of Alexander the Great)


First it was the development of "divorce" to destroy the nuclear family.  No family then, there is no stability or social structure at all.  How can a community develop without families?  And if there is no sound community then the "Holy Box of Oz" can insure the little sheeple do what they are told to do, just vegetate in front of the holy box:

(((time to 630 is perfect on this video)))
Not my cup of tea...  Martha states this clearly:

"These abilities are associated with the humanities and the arts: the ability to think critically; the ability to transcend local loyalties and to approach world problems as a 'citizen of the world;' and, finally, the ability to imagine sympathetically the predicament of another person"

She goes on to discuss how democracy can not survive without full citizens.  This is really so true.  For decades the US has survived, but it's not a democracy.  People still believe it is, but it really isn't.  Votes are collected and counted, but also separated and burned.  Now it's done with technology, while when the counties in Florida first started it was standard procedure to have a dumpster burn on election night.  That has happened for generations here, and everyone in the system knew it, and laughed about it.  "Dam Yankee's can't get elected here."  Course the Bush Gore fiasco made it obvious to everyone across the world, but still nothing was done about it.  SO what can you do?  Go to court?  But all the judges are appointed or elected too, do you think they will allow anyone to rock the boat they are in?

Not likely. But again Martha in this article does make the clear statement that "cultivated capacities for critical thinking and reflection are crucial in keeping democracies alive and wide awake" which is precisely my point about sheeple - - lost people following each other around, not very conscious, no idea where they are going, but content and happy to just be sheep vegetating in front of the boob tube!

Making Watershed Partnerships Work

Leach, William D. and Pelkey, Neil W.  Making Watershed Partnerships Work: A Review Of The Empirical Literature. Journal Of Water Resources Planning And Management / November/December 2001 378-385

This article reviewed 37 empirical literature studies on watershed partnerships between 1990-1999 within the developed English-speaking Nations of Australia, US and Canada.  These studies identified 210 "lessons learned" which were grouped for review into 28 thematic categories that were then divided in 4 main factors for analysis which included:  1—resources and scope (eigenvalue 3.5; 24%) 2—Flexibility and Informality (eigenvalue 3.1; 21%) 3—ADR theory variables (eigenvalue 4.9; 33%) 4—IAD theory variables (eigenvalue 2.5; 17%).

The two main goals were first to assess the partnership policies used and second to make recommendation for new partnerships.  As many know in this field, the US National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA: 42 USC §4321 et. seq 1969) initiated the requirement for Environmental Impact Assessments for all major federal actions.  This included a minimal level of public input.  As other research has shown the engaged citizens improve the community support of major water works projects (Borton, Warner, Wenrich, Havlick, & Frost 1970).  In this case the Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) first sponsored a “groundbreaking” study to explore public involvement in New York’s Susquehanna River watershed in 1969.  Similarly, this current article pointed out that watershed partnerships have been more and more common in the last decade.

28 thematic categories
 The article defined Watershed Partnerships as "assemblies of stakeholders who periodically convene to discuss or negotiate the management of streams, rivers, or watersheds (Sommarstrom in Born and Genskow 1999)" (Leach and Pelkey 2001).  Such meetings can be highly formal or informal providing only general guidance and direction to the more formal legislative bodies.  Partnerships have been shown to engage stakeholders in active communication and build consensus to avoid costly delays and litigation (Manring 1998).

The article continues with listing several other major studies which determined other key facts regarding partnerships.  Leach and Pelkey (2001) references included:

• watershed partnerships distribution and function (University of Colorado 1996; Kenney 1999)
• social and environmental factors that promote new partnership formation (Leach and Pelkey 2001a)
• threats and opportunities that partnerships create for representative democracy (Kenney 2000)
• watershed groups involving a shared common vision from the start (Cook 2000)
• partnerships as an egalitarian alternative to agency-dominated management (Griffin 1999; Kenney 1999). 
• watershed partnerships  as combinations of theory and evidence (Born and Sonzogni 1995; Margerum and Born 1995; Toupal and Johnson 1998; Bellamy et al. 1999; and Griffin 1999)

For Leach and Pelkey current analysis the criteria for selection of studies to review included:

1. Empirical studies
2. Analytical studies with factors for success, including data.
3. Only in Australia, Canada, or the United States.
4. only long-term "Partnerships" with the planning and/or implementation of projects.
5. ‘‘Watershed’’ is defined liberally to include natural issues at the scale of watersheds or ecosystems.

Another, key element discussed in the article was that all the selected studies included measures of the partnership success based on written stakeholder perceptions, surveys or other actual partnership activity documentation.  However, none of the studies included an analysis of any possible socioeconomic or ecological watershed impacts.

However, Leach and Pelkey analysis of the existing research was substantial. I have summaries the top ten identified "lessons learned" for "watershed partnership success" include:

1	Adequate funding	62.2%
2	Effective leadership	59.5%
3	Limited scope	43.2%
4	Inclusive diverse participation	43.2%
5	Creative, cooperative & committed participants	43.2%
6	Good interpersonal skills & mutual trust	43.2%
7	Begin with completing low conflict tasks	37.8%
8	Active professional staff participation	35.1%
9	Well-defined decision rules or process rules	32.4%
10	Emphasized scientific information or understanding importance	29.7%

These lessons learned provide one dimension of how to create watershed partnership successes (see 10-20 below).  However, to get a better understanding of how these different issues affect each other, and how certain factors compliment each other, the authors completed a factor analysis.

4 main factors for analysis
To begin this review the "factor analysis" procedures used include:

Factor analysis is a commonly used "exploratory technique" (Harman 1976). The analysis was carried out using "Sorensen’s similarity index" (Greig-Smith 1983).  "MVSP software" calculated Sorensen’s index. "NCSS software" performed the factor analysis with principal axis extraction and varimax rotation. [[[direct quotes to look up and link]]]

The factors are defined:
Factor 1 - Resources and Scope - This first factor accounted for 24% of the variance.  This included resources such as time, legislative support, agency support, funding and complimentary other resources.  Gordon and Jones (1998); Born and Genskow (1999) claim hydrologic watersheds are best because corresponding to the "problem shed" which is contrary to Thomas (1999) who claimed large watershed resulted in too many issues and distance barriers to stakeholders.

Factor 2 - Flexibility and Informality - This factor accounted for 21% of the variance, including issues of operation rules, authority, federal, state and local balancing as well as other governance and decision making processes.  Studies indicated that strength lies in the partnerships ability to provide a "flexible, informal, and relatively egalitarian alternative to traditional forms of resource management"

Factor 3 - Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) - This factor resulted in 33% variance, which included the levels of effective communication, well-defined rules, consensus building, open membership with clear membership rules, high levels of trust, manageable goals and effective leadership.

Factor 4 - This factor had a 17% variance using the IAD framework of a "rational factor model" with well-defined rules and transparent stakeholder rights and  responsibilities.

These factors do represent how some studies specifically used the ADR and IAD methods, but over all the final conclusions for successful partnerships seemed a bit elementary.  First they determined that funding and management were critical to success.  This included that a skilled facilitator was a first step for successful partnerships, and this improved with a facilitator who was neutral to the process, followed clearly defined rules with free sharing of information.  Next in importance was the creative adn cooperative stakeholders ready to compromise and find consensus instead of simply fight for the party-line.  This lead to a recommendation that future research explore removing "intransigent members without creating new problems."


Reerences

Born, S. M., and Genskow, K. D. (1999). ‘‘Exploring the watershed approach: Critical dimensions of state-local partnerships.’’ The Four Corners Watershed Innovators Initiative Final Rep., River Network, Portland, OR

Borton, T. E., Warner, K. P., Wenrich, J. W., Havlick, S. W., & Frost, J. (1970). The Susquehanna Communication-Participation Study: Selected Approaches to Public Involvement in Water Resources Planning. Alexandria, Virginia: U. S. Army Engineer Institute for Water Resources.

Manring, N. (1998). ‘‘Collaborative resource management: Organizational benefits and individual costs.’’ Admin. & Soc., 30(3), 274–290.

Social Indicators

Genskow, Kenneth and Prokopy, Linda Stalker (2010) Lessons Learned in Developing Social Indicators for Regional Water Quality Management, Society & Natural Resources, 23: 1, 83 — 91

This article explored the problem of developing suitable Social Indicators for a region, similar to a watershed.  Often watershed issues involve multiple states, cities and other federal and local regulatory bodies, similar to the Great Lakes region discussed in this article.

Academically Adrift

Arum, Richard; Roksa, Josipa.  Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses University Of Chicago Press (January 15, 2011) ISBN-10: 0226028569. 272 pages

This article describes how American public education is still in the toilet.  Once again American corporations are questioning whether schools teach any writing or critical thinking skills at all.  College graduates must be able to think critically and analytically with sustained logical thinking.  Schools need to be creating new social capital where student gain the knowledge and skills that are rewarded in the market place, before all industries are outsourced to other countries.  The article then jumps into some history on the educational system.

The first passage addresses how college bound freshman anticipate the parties, fraternities and social functions of college long before considering any requirements necessary to begin studies or any serious career pursuits.  Students are perceived as adrift, unprepared and devoted to personal and social interests before academics.  There now has developed an abundance of evidence that academic efforts have declined further in recent decades.  Studies discussed in the article indicated that full-time college students worked a full forty hours a week in pure academics in the 1960s while todays’ students complete only 27 hours, which is less than the typical high school student.  This is true for all students in all disciplines, demographics and locations.  Students are finding easier and faster ways to get through with less and less true academic work.

Interesting enough this problem with true learning is not only on the student side.  George Kuh’s research found a general willingness of faculty to “disengage” through a “compact” described as a faculty student agreement of “I’ll leave you alone if you leave me alone.”  Thus, faculty have become more willing to allow students to get by with good grades with very little academic effort.  The funding shortfalls and cutbacks in education, while billions are given to corporate subsidies and defense conglomerate, has essentially guaranteed this.  Colleges and universities are allowing more adjuncts and graduate student teachers to replace tenured faculty for undergraduate training.  Another statistic discussed is that tenure faculty taught 78% of classes in 1970 while only 52% in 2005.

The majority of full tenured faculty must pursue scholarship, research and publications instead of education training or thoughtful attention to undergraduate classes.  As mentioned in this article Ernest Boyner noted that in 1969 21% of faculty agreed tenure was difficult without publishing, while in 1989 42% agreed.  Additionally, in regards to other important elements for college faculty tenure including classroom observation, student recommendation, student academic advising, and course syllabi the levels of importance of these were 13%, 9%, 5% and 5% respectively.  The only significant element for tenure regarding students was how they complete teacher evaluations.  This is completely contrary to education, since the best teachers should be challenging the students instead of making it easy and convenient for the students to give a good evaluation.  This was further expanded on by the article saying how student evaluations actually tended to encourage faculty to “game the system by replacing rigorous and demanding classroom instruction with entertaining classroom activities, lover academic standards and generous distribution of high course marks.”

Additional distractions leading to lower efforts in undergraduate teaching for tenured faculty include such activities as “output creep,” “academic ratchet,” the “academic revolution” and the “commercialization of higher education” initiated by the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 which allowed universities to patent work completed with federal grant funding.  Thus, faculty are encouraged to publish and excel in professional development to support new research funding.  Research work leading to patent development has also shifted the administrative functions of universities.  The typical administrator moving up from teaching positions is a thing of the past.  One example expressed in the article is how one in seven university presidents now comes from outside academia.  Professional search consultants are used by more than 50% of the institutions today while only 12% in 1984.  This had resulted in university presidents earning salaries over $1 million which continues to significantly shift the function and identity of these institutions.

Review: Academically Adrift: A Must-Read. By Richard Vedder

January 20, 2011, 10:53 am

http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/academically-adrift-a-must-read/28423

Developing research questions

Morrison, Jill (2002). Developing research questions in medical education: the science and the art. Medical Education. 36(7):596-597.

This article got very specific on the issues of defining research questions.  If you do not ask the right question then regardless of the measurements and results the answers found might be totally useless.

A related study found that research lacking a sound clear problem statement was the 2nd most common problem cited.   This included no problem statement at all, nothing focused, misleading statements and.or totally inappropriate statements.  The article started with a statement that the journal rejects 75% of the articles submitted.  40% are simply poor science while the remaining 35% fall into three catagories:

1. not original, old news not worth publishing.
2. no general interest, not providing suitable information that readership will respond to.
3. no international relevance, self explanatory.

Thus having a good question is critical.  In this article Morrison spoke about how to define the research questions and then how to check to see if it is worth investigating at all and to define if it has not been investigated already.  It started with a very basic formula.  If we have a problem to investigate we will begin with these six basic questions:

1. who
2. what
3. where
4. why
5. when
6. how

From this list everything else follows.  The formula she used was very simple.  First we select the question above that we really want to get answered.  Then we phrase the question to answer all the other six components, leaving only one for the research question.  Like the problem with blogging?  How does it teach us anything?  That is a place to start where my question is only interested in item number 6 above, so let's try this:

HOW  do students (the who) learn good writing skills (the what) in the expository writing class (the where) by publishing their work (the why) before graduating (the when) ???

For this question above I started with "HOW" from my question about the blogging problem then filled in the sentence in the order above answering all the other questions listed.  So How (6) is what I wanted to know while (1-5) were covered in the question statement itself.  That represents a neat little formula for getting very specific on the research question.  This is not everything we need to begin research yet, because we now need to test the question to see if it will result in anything useful.  For this we check to see if it meets all of these:

1. Interest - is anyone interested in the answer?  If it takes 3 years of research to get the answer do you think it will still be interesting for you?
2. Importance - is it something that will be valuable to anyone?  If you still care in 3 years, what about 10 years?  Will it matter to anyone then?
3. Generalizability - is it something that applies to anyone else?  Will the results help in any other situation beyond the one example you are exploring?
4. Feasible - is it even possible to test and measure this?  What does it cost to get meaningful results and suitable measurements to come to any conclusion?  Is 3 years enough?  What if it will take 30 years?  What is the point then?

Now let me explore this a bit more "How do students learn good writing skills in the expository writing class by publishing their work before graduating???"

1. Interest?  Yes, I am interested, I want to know if bloggin is a suitable means, as I am sure we all do in this class!  Many teachers might like to know too.  Most bloggers are online for their own reasons, but I'm sure there are many who are trying to learn something or share something, beyond just writing skills.
2. Important?   Yes, I need to know how to learn good writing skills.  Or I'm wasting my time writing and wasting my time trying to publish. Good writing is necessary if I'm venturing into a career and graduate program to research and publish insights.
3. Generalizable?  Sound writing skills is something the whole population should possess, especially in academia. 
4. Feasible?  Well it is easy to study whether this research is feasible.  I guess we could have a class survey at the end.  Do you write better after the class?  We 'll see!  I'm sure someone knows, as this class has been taught before!

Research Questions and Designs

Bohannon, Richard W. (1999). Research Questions and Designs. Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation. Activities Related to Clinical Research. 14(3):53-59.

This article provided an overview of research theory and design.  When someone begins their own research, what questions do they ask and how do they use these questions to develop a viable research plan?  Any research activity will be an expensive undertaking.  Most will require institutional support or specific measurable results that are viable for product development or sales.  Measurable results are the key element in any case.   Thus, developing a suitable research plan that will yield specific measurable results is fundamental for any research activity design.

Some very basic research questions are given in the article and discussed including:

1. How good are the measurements of the variable or problem of interest?
2. What is the extent and nature of the problem?
3. To what is the variable or problem of interest related?
4. What are the effects of interventions on the problem?

These very basic questions seemingly will apply to everyone everywhere doing research.  The key elements are the variables of measurement for the problem of interest.  What can be measured regarding the problem?  How does the measurement vary with how big or severe the problem is?  And more importantly for researching: how are the measurements related to the problem, and how can these measurements change with an outside influence or implementing an intervention that affects the problem.  These questions further bring out the importance of measurements and how variable measurements are central to an analysis.

The specific qualities of measurements introduced included reliability, validity, sensitivity, and responsiveness. These terms each have significant meanings related to measurements. I found it interesting how it took me a while to find links that defined these points similar to the article definitions.   Everywhere we can find definitions online, but finding something appropriate to what this author was trying to say took a bit of an effort. 

This discussion leads us further into the basic design elements that were also addressed in the article.  Each of these elements can be used to derive different measurements.  They provide different ways of looking at the same problem and finding the measurements differently.  The options specifically defined and reviewed with examples in the health industry include:

1. Quantitative versus qualitative - measurements
2. Prospective versus retrospective - analysis
3. Cross-sectional versus longitudinal - periods of data reviews
4. Non-experimental versus experimental - research design elements

These options are discussed and defined similar to the measurement qualities linked above.   Instead of going to the web and trying to find links that fit each word as Bohannon discussed in the article, I will simply paraphrase the main points he made below. 

1) Quantitative research is looking at the specific numbers measured for the defined variable only, while qualitative is looking more at the big picture and looking for the overall meaning and conceptual understanding the research shows instead of just a measurement quantity.  Qualitative is often open-ended observations and perceptions like using a survey to getting peoples' feelings, believes and values.  2) Prospective is designing a planned experiment to gather data specifically during an event or time period, while retrospective it reviewing data someone else has already collected elsewhere.  3) A cross-sectional analysis would be done at one moment in time, while the longitudinal investigations are carried out over a period of time.  4)  Non-experimental options defined in the article included "case-studies, surveys and secondary analysis" while experiments are specific actions done to measure the results.

"Case-studies, surveys and secondary analysis" were explained in more detail again with examples.  Here is another quick clip directly from the article:

1. Case studies are in-depth descriptions of one or more subjects.
2. Surveys are used to obtain information from respondents via written questionnaires or interviews.
3. Secondary analysis of archived material - or other sources collected by others.

Finally the article discusses the "randomized controlled trial" as the "gold standard" for experimental research.  This is when a random representative sample is taken from the population where measurements are taken before and after the intervention.  The sampled populations are blind to whether they are in the control group or not.  This is the research type that is most respected.  It should be designed to reduce the variables and outside effects so that the only thing the sample is affected by is the variables affected by the intervention.  All the other pieces reviewed in the article lead up to this and this is what researchers should be heading for.

The article did describe a few other techniques that can be used.  The random control trial is the best though, so I will only list the others here:

• quasi-experimental designs
• sequential medical trial
• explicatory experiment
• single-case experiment