bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Monitoring Agricultural Drought in Mainland Portugal
Authors: Guerreiro Rita , Pires Vanda Cabrinha
Published: November 2020

Mainland Portugal (37°–42°Nlatitude) is located in the transitional region between the subtropical anticyclone and the subpolar depression zones. In addition to latitude, its orography and the effect of the Atlantic Ocean are the major factors affecting the climate of the mainland Portugal. The highest altitudes vary from 1000 m to 1500 m, with the exception of the Serra da Estrela range, whose peak is just below 2000 m. The regions farthest from the Atlantic Ocean are around 220 km away. Portugal has a total area of 9.2 million ha, 41% of which is devoted to cropland. Although agricultural practices in some regions are still traditional and not competitive, they are slowly becoming more and more industrialized and employ about 20% of the active population, which includes employment in agricultural industries as well. The inclusion of Portugal to the European Community in 1986, on the one hand, provided financial resources, but, on the other hand, caused agricultural policy to become more dependent on community policies. Farm size has doubled since the 1970s with increased mechanization. Wine production is the most important agricultural activity, which contributes significantly to Portugal’s economy (GPPAA, 1999). Among fruit trees, apples and citrus fruit have the highest productions, about 250,000 tons and 230,000 tons per year, respectively. Olive trees produce about 40,000 tons of olive oil per year (GPPAA, 1999). Food grain production is relatively low and not enough for domestic use. This is mainly due to the prevailing climate. The Portuguese climate is classified as Mediterranean, with some variations depending on orography and latitude. The annual cycles of monthly mean precipitation and temperature (minimum and maximum) reveal that warm and dry summers are more pronounced in the southern regions. This type of climate presents several drawbacks to agriculture, the major one being insufficient rainfall during the summer or spring seasons (Pinto and Brandão, 2002). Most of the rainfall occurs during winter season, from November until March. The majority of soils in Portugal are badly drained and suffer from water logging during the rainy season. A significant decrease in spring precipitation has been observed for last two decades.
Monitoring Agricultural Drought: The Case of Kenya
Authors: Ogallo Laban A. , Otengi Silvery B.
Published: November 2020

Agriculture is the mainstay of Kenya’s economic development and accounts for about 30% of the country’s gross domestic product, 60% of export earnings, and 70% of the labor force. This sector is the largest source of employment (Government of Kenya, 1995). More than 85% of the population survives in one way or the other on agricultural activities (crops and livestock). Agriculture in Kenya is mainly rain-fed, with little irrigation. About 46% of the rural population live below the poverty line, with 70% of them below food poverty line. Like many parts of the tropics, the majority of agricultural activities in Kenya are rain dependent. Small-scale farmers, pastoralists, and wildlife are most often affected by drought, with crops withering and livestock as well as wildlife dying. Drought of more than one season overwhelms the social fabric, as crops, livestock, wild animals, and humans die. Such droughts affect pastoral communities (e.g., the Masai in Kenya and Tanzania) by killing livestock and game animals, forcing these communities to invade the nearby towns and cities to find remnants of patches of grass still left there or grass growing at the roadsides. The death of game animals affects ecotourism. Interannual climate variability that often leads to the recurrence of climate extremes such as droughts has far-reaching impacts on agricultural production. Figure 18.1 shows below-normal rainfall during different years that are often associated with droughts in Kenya. These rainfall deficits are caused by the anomalies in the circulation patterns that can extend from local or regional to very large scales. Some patterns that are responsible for spatial and temporal distribution of rainfall in Kenya include the Intertropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ), subtropical anticyclones, monsoonal wind systems, tropical cyclones, easterly/westerly wave perturbations, subtropical jet streams, East African low-level jet stream, extratropical weather systems, teleconnection with El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO), and quasi-biennial oscillation (Ogallo, 1988, 1991, 1994). In addition, complex physical features such as large inland lakes, mountains, and complex orographic patterns (e.g., the Great Rift Valley) influence rainfall patterns. Lake Victoria in western Kenya is also one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world and has its own strong circulation patterns in space and time.
Evolution of Complexity in Microbial Populations
Authors: Adams Julian
Published: November 2020

Complexity in the living world can be seen at many different levels of organization. Even the simplest of free-living organisms possesses an extremely complex structure and metabolism [7], still incompletely understood in spite of concerted efforts over the last several decades by armies of molecular and cellular biologists. Populations of organisms can also be considered to possess their own intrinsic complexity, being comprised of assemblages of genetically different organisms. Although there may be a few exceptions (e.g., O'Brien and Wildt [11] and Cohn [2]), the genome of each member of a population can be considered to be genetically unique. One notable application of this observation has occurred in forensic science. In the last ten years or so, DNA typing, with its overwhelming power to identify individual members of a population, has been used in numerous criminal court cases to establish the guilt—or innocence—of defendants. A central issue in population genetics and evolutionary biology continues to be the explanation of the large amounts of genetic variability observed in natural populations of virtually all species examined. The search for mechanisms has mainly focused on patterns of selective differences (or lack thereof), which can maintain pre-existing variability in populations, and has largely ignored the more basic, but related question of the evolution of the more complex polymorphic state (genetic variation in populations) from the simpler condition of monomorphism (genetic uniformity). Simple population genetic theory has been remarkably unsuccessful in proposing plausible and global mechanisms which would result in such widespread variation. Heterozygous advantage is frequently invoked as a mechanism for the maintenance of genetic variation in populations of diploid sexually reproducing eukaryotes. However, the paucity of well-authenticated cases of overdominance, as well as theoretical difficulties implicit in the assumption of heterozygote superiority for many loci, make it unlikely as a general explanation for the maintenance of polymorphism. Furthermore, the luxury of explanations involving heterozygous advantage is not available for haploid and asexually reproducing species. Alternatively, "neutral" theory postulates that genetically different individuals in a population do not differ in their ability to survive and pass on their genes to future generations—that is, they possess identical "fitnesses." The abundance of examples of fitness differences between individuals makes such an explanation unlikely.
Tags, Interaction Patterns, and the Evolution of Cooperation
Authors: Riolo Rick L. , Cohen Michael D.
Published: November 2020

There are several key ideas that appear in almost all of John Holland's writings on artificial and natural complex adaptive systems: internal models, default hierarchies, genetic (evolutionary) algorithms, and recombination of building blocks. One other mechanism, which is linked to all of those, is tag-based interaction. Perhaps the first use of tag-based interaction (though it was not so named) can be found in Holland's "broadcast system," [26] a formal specification of an architecture suitable for modeling adaptation of open-ended, parallel processes. Tag-based interaction mechanisms next played a key role in classifier systems [30, 32]. In classifier systems, a tag acts as a kind of "address" of one or more classifier rules (productions), enabling rules to send messages to selected sets of rules, and allowing rules to select which messages they will respond to. Thus, tags provide a way to structure computations, making it possible to prove that classifier systems are computationally complete [18], to various neural network architectures [8, 55] and even to abstract models of immune systems [17]. Tags also are used to form coupled chains of classifiers, to construct subroutinelike structures, and to allow Holland's Bucket Brigade algorithm to efficiently allocate credit to "stage setting" rules [9, 30, 50]. Holland has also described how tagged classifiers might be used to form default hierarchies and other more complex internal models [28, 30, 33, 46]. More generally, Holland has emphasized the key role that tag-based interaction mechanisms have in almost all complex adaptive systems (CAS), i.e., systems composed of limited capability agents who interact to generate systemlevel behavior [31]. In the context of CAS, tags are arbitrary properties or traits of agents which are visible to other agents, and which agents can detect and use to condition reactions to other tag-carrying agents. Tags can be agent features, such as surface markings, or they can be agent behaviors, from behavioral routines in animals to more complex behaviors of humans, e.g., wearing particular clothes, carrying flags, or following religious customs [3, 31, 53]. Since agents can have different tags, and since arbitrary tags can come to be associated with particular types of agents (with their own interaction and behavioral patterns), tags can take on "meanings" by virtue of the types of agents who display each particular tag, i.e., as a result of the other behavioral traits those agents tend to have.
Sierra Motherlode, Domain 2
Authors: Alexander Earl B. , Coleman Roger G. , Keeler-Wolfe Todd , Harrison Susan P.
Published: November 2020

The Sierra Motherlode domain is in a series of allochthonous terranes, sometimes called the “Foothill Belt,” along the western edge of the north-northwest–south-southeast trending Sierra Nevada, adjacent to the Great Valley of California. It is a discontinuous belt from the southern Sierra Nevada, in Tulare and Fresno counties, to Butte County in the northern Sierra Nevada , but a branch within the belt is practically continuous from El Dorado County about 140 km north to Plumas County at the north end of the range. Cenozoic block faulting has lifted the Sierra Nevada and tilted the mountain range toward the west; therefore the highest elevations are on the east side of the range. Uplift is more pronounced in the southern than in the northern Sierra Nevada. Altitudes range from <200 m adjacent to the Great Valley to more than 4000 m along the crest of the central to southern part of the mountain range. The highest altitudes in the Sierra Motherlode domain are 1939 m (6360 feet) on Red Mountain and 1935 m (6335 feet) on Red Hill in Plumas County, and even higher on some of the granitic plutons that are within the outer limits of the serpentine domain. These plutons were intruded into the allochthonous terranes after the terranes had been accreted onto the continent. Much of the western slope of the northern Sierra Nevada is an undulating to rolling plateau. This plateau is a remnant from the early Tertiary when its surface was deeply weathered to produce lateritic serpentine soils with silica deposited in the subsoils and in fractures in the bedrock (Rice and Cleveland 1955, Rice 1957). The ancient plateau was capped by volcanic flows that produced a practically continuous cover in the northern Sierra Nevada (Durrell 1966). Uplift along the eastern side of the northern part of the Sierra Nevada to initiate its current relief commenced 4 or 5 Ma ago (Wakabayashi and Sawyer 2001). Since the range began to rise a few million years ago, the larger streams flowing across it have cut deep canyons up to about 600 m below the plateau.
Gulf of Alaska, Domain 8
Authors: Alexander Earl B. , Coleman Roger G. , Keeler-Wolfe Todd , Harrison Susan P.
Published: November 2020

The Gulf of Alaska domain extends eastward from Kodiak Island across the Kenai Peninsula, around the Chugach Mountains, and beyond Tonsina, curves southward across the glacier-covered St. Elias Mountains. The southeastern segment of the domain is west of the Canadian Coastal Mountains and includes the coastline and islands in southeastern Alaska. Ultramafic rocks occur sporadically in this region from British Columbia northwestward through southeastern Alaska and around the Gulf of Alaska to the Kenai Peninsula. Most of this domain is mountainous, especially in areas where there are ultramafic rocks. Elevations range from sea level to >5000 m, although ultramafic rocks are not found at the highest elevations. This area was glaciated during the Pleistocene. Many glaciers persist at the higher elevations, and some descend to sea level. The present climate ranges from cold to very cold and from humid to very humid, or perhumid. Mean annual precipitation ranges from 30 or 40 cm on the north side and west end of the Chugach Mountains, to >400 cm along the coast around Prince William Sound and in southeastern Alaska. Southeastern Alaska is a humid-to-perhumid area with dense forests at lower elevations that grade upward into alpine areas. The north side of the Chugach Mountains is drier, but still humid. Precipitation exceeds evapotranspiration in all months of every year. The frost-free period ranges from no more than a few days or weeks at the higher elevations to about 220 days in sheltered areas near sea level in southeasern Alaska. Some of the highest snowfall in North America is in this domain, and ice caps persist in some of the higher mountains with many glaciers flowing into the sea. Serpentine rocks of the Gulf of Alaska domain occur in both ophiolites and in concentric bodies, and some are from the roots of volcanic arcs complexes. West of the Chatham Straight fault, a discontinuous belt of ultramafic bodies extends for >1600 km from Kodiak Island across the Kenai Peninsula, and around the Chugach Range, arching southward as far as Baranof Island (Burns 1985).
The Development of English Agriculture and the Recognition of the Fertiliser Deficit
Authors: Leigh G. J.
Published: November 2020

So far, it has been shown that nitrogen is an important constituent of living things and that its availability may be limited if soil is not carefully husbanded. Older civilisations have discovered ways of supplying the required nitrogen through the use of fallows or fertilisers of different kinds, such as green fertilisers or manures. Such knowledge must have developed only slowly. The Romans occupied a vast swathe of Europe and parts of Asia and applied their agricultural techniques, as described in the previous chapter, wherever they found them useful. They had realised that a two-crop rotation was not very productive in that half the cultivable fields were lying fallow at any one time. They developed three-field rotations and applied fertilisers and green manures. However, they never succeeded in avoiding the presence of fallow altogether. This chapter concentrates primarily on the British Isles, for which a vast amount of information is available. Historians of agriculture tend to believe that even Bronze Age farmers were aware of the value of dung and that they probably practised primitive two-field rotations. They did not have a plough other than the ard, which was essentially a hard-pointed shaft that was dragged through the soil by oxen or even pushed through the soil by human brute force. More sophisticated ploughs did not reach Britain until later. Traces of the ancient fields or terraces are still evident in parts of Scotland and on the chalk hills of southern England. These are in open areas that must have been the most appropriate for agriculture since much of the rest of lowland Britain was covered by dense forest, as in the Weald of Sussex and Kent. The Weald (the name derives from the same root as the modern German word Wald, meaning wood or forest) is the area of the two counties between the chalk hills of the North and South Downs. These hills are seemingly contrarily called Downs because the name is derived from a Germanic word for dunes. They have been settled for many thousands of years, and the remains of hill forts are evident in many places.
Nitrogen, Threat or Benefaction? The Spectre at the Feast
Authors: Leigh G. J.
Published: November 2020

The world today is a very different place from what it was in about 1900. It is a very different place from what it was even in the 1960s. This is not to say that the worries and preoccupations of 1900 and the 1960s have just disappeared. Rather, they still remain, but as a consequence of the activities of the Club of Rome and the many similar organisations that have arisen since then, people are much more conscious of them. The famous energy crisis of 1973, provoked by the rapid quadrupling of the price of oil, hardly a natural process, served to push such considerations to the fore. The simple questions that were once posed (such as “How shall we feed a growing population?”) have been joined to many others. Is there a limit to population growth beyond which the potential food supply will really be exceeded? Is there a limit beyond which the perturbation of the environment by human actions will produce changes that will irretrievably damage both people and the environment? Are there really limits to growth? What can we reasonably do that will not produce disaster? This is a far cry from the Victorian and even old-fashioned capitalistic and Soviet attitudes that seemed then and still seem to assume that humans, being at the pinnacle of evolution (or, alternatively, being placed at the pinnacle of animal life by God), were free to exploit Earth and its resources as much as seemed necessary. Even to attempt to answer such questions, it is necessary to understand what the current state of Earth and the environment really are, and this is not simply a matter of looking out of the window and making a snap judgement, or even looking out of several windows over a certain period. It is necessary to do serious research and then attempt to make sound judgements. This is no trivial matter because often there is little objective guidance as to what constitutes a sound judgement. The idea that human activities are upsetting the current equilibrium between people and the environment is based upon a misconception.
Creation, Destruction, and Changes in Volume of Continental Crust Through Time
Authors: Rogers John J. W. , Santosh M.
Published: November 2020

The low density of continental crust creates areas of land that cover about 25% of the world’s surface. The ultimate source of this crust must have been the mantle, but the mechanisms and times of extraction are not well known. Because the rate at which continental crust has been destroyed and incorporated back into the mantle is also uncertain, the volume of continental crust that existed in the earth throughout its history is highly controversial. We investigate these problems in this chapter, beginning with a discussion of how the wide variety of rocks that constitute the crust may have evolved from the mantle. The next section summarizes information on the rates of destruction of crust, which leads to the issue of changes in the volume of continental crust through time. We leave to chapter 4 the discussion of “cratons,” which are large areas of continental crust that became stable at different times in the past 3 billion years and then moved around the earth as relatively undeformed continental blocks. Cratons are commonly referred to as “shields” where their crystalline basement rocks are exposed. The discussion in this chapter and several later chapters requires some knowledge of the significance of isotopic information, and we provide a brief summary in appendix D. In order to describe continental crust and its relationships to other parts of the earth, we must start with several definitions. “Sialic” (Si + Al) refers to rocks, such as granite, that are particularly rich in SiO2, with Al2O3 as the second most abundant oxide; they are commonly referred to as “felsic.” “Simatic” (Si + Mg) similarly designates basalts and other low-silica “mafic” rocks. “Ultrasimatic” and “ultramafic” refer to rocks extremely rich in olivine, mostly different varieties of peridotite. Some sialic (felsic) rocks have high concentrations of large-ion-lithophile (LIL) elements, which are ions that are “incompatible” with (do not fit into) typical minerals in the mantle, including olivine, pyroxene, and calcic plagioclase. LIL elements include K, Rb, Ba, and U, which is coordinated with oxygen to form the low-density uranyl complex (UO2+2).
Effects of Continents and Supercontinents on Organic Evolution
Authors: Rogers John J. W. , Santosh M.
Published: November 2020

The earth’s organic life has changed continually for more than 3.5 billion years. This evolution may have resulted partly from environmental stress generated by tectonic activity within the earth and partly from processes independent of the earth’s interior. This chapter investigates these different effects in an attempt to determine the role that continents played in the evolution of organisms. Continents and tectonics associated with them may have influenced organic evolution in both active and passive ways. Active effects include several processes that partly controlled the earth’s surface environment. Climate change was caused partly by movements of continents and construction of orogenic belts. Continental rifting increased the area of shallow seas as new continental margins subsided. Changes in volume of ocean ridges and epeiric movements of continents caused marine transgressions and regressions. Temperatures of water in shallow seas increased or decreased as continents moved across latitudes. The major passive effects of continents and supercontinents result from their influence on diversity of organisms. When continents were broadly dispersed and occupied most latitudes, as on the present earth, this isolation resulted in shallow-water and subaerial families that contained numerous genera, genera with large numbers of species, and species divided among many different varieties. This diversity was clearly smaller at times when continents were aggregated into a few landmasses and particularly low when supercontinents permitted exchange of organisms throughout most of the world’s land and shallow seas. During times of major environmental stress, these differences would have restricted extinction of organisms to local species and genera during times of high diversity but might have permitted disappearance of whole orders and classes when diversity was low. Organic evolution was almost certainly affected by species diversity, but it may have occurred without any active control by tectonic processes. Although evolution probably occurs only when changing environments place stresses on organisms that enhance the competition among them, it is also possible that competition between organisms can cause evolution even without significant environmental change. Furthermore, some environmental change probably resulted from processes that are not related to the tectonics of the solid earth.
Making Learning Meaningful
Authors: Allen Janet , Landaker Christine
Published: November 2020

When encouraging readers of history, we have several broad goals for our students as readers and as learners. We want them to leave their reading with some knowledge of content and to be able to discriminate among ideas for significance, bias, point of view, and perspective. We would like them to think about what they learned and how they learned it, acknowledging the value of talk and others’ opinions and ideas when they are forming their own opinions. We would also hope the study we’ve done would prompt them to ask new questions that lead them to further reading and study. At this stage in their lives, these readers have assumed the reader role of “Text Critic” as they analyze, synthesize, apply, and extend their learning into independent learning and historical expertise. Many of us have enjoyed students who see themselves as historical experts. On Christine’s first day as a social studies teacher, before the bell had rung to allow students to enter class, she encountered her first expert in her new students, Stephen:… “So, you’re going to be my U.S. History teacher. What do you know about Patton?” “Do you mean George Patton from World War II?” “Yes. If you’re going to expect me to learn from you, you better know your World War II stuff. And, you’re going to have to have seen the movie. Have you seen it?” “Well, no. But if you have it . . . “I have it right here with me. Watch it tonight and we can talk about it tomorrow.”… Christine had found her first expert—and her first ally. This is the kind of student we hope we foster as we are planning curriculum and instruction throughout the year. In Ways That Work: Putting Social Studies Standards into Practice, Tarry Lindquist expects these outcomes and plans for them at the beginning of the unit. “Whenever I plan a unit, I first brainstorm ways my students can acquire knowledge, manipulate data, practice skills, and apply their understanding through group activities” (1997, 101). As a result of the time Christine and her students spend working on questioning, thoughtful and careful reading, exposure to multiple texts, and sharing ideas with others, the satisfaction of those goals is evident in her classroom.
The Ten Best Tools and Peripherals You Didn’t Know About
Authors: Pournelle Jerry
Published: November 2020

1. Flat-panel monitors—OK, you not only know about flatpanel monitors, you’ve longed for one for years. But if you haven’t checked the prices recently, check again—this may be the time to buy. These monitors are now brighter, sharper, and clearer than ever. A 17-, 19-, even a 20-inch display has become more affordable, especially as part of a new computer system. With no border inside the frame, you see much more display area than with a CRT that boasts the same screen size. Some can even be rotated between portrait and landscape views. In the bargain, flat-panel monitors weigh less, emit fewer UV rays, use less electricity, and generate far less heat.They really are cool! 2. Multifunction printers—MFPs (multi-function printers), or all-in-ones, actually do do it all: print, copy, scan, and (usually) fax. Conventional wisdom cautions against hardware that performs more than one function, on the theory that if one part fails the whole thing goes south. But modern MFPs are solid and reliable. And they’re vastly more simple to set up and use than four separate machines (think software, wires, and space). Laser MFPs usually print, copy, and fax in black and white but scan in color. Ink-jet models do everything in color. Ink jets are initially less expensive, but if you factor in the cost of rapidly consumed color cartridges, laser is cheaper in the long run— especially if your primary output is text. 3. Photo printers—On the other hand, specialized ink-jet photo printers, which make it a breeze to print color images from your digital camera, are growing more and more popular. Some of them are flexible enough to print directly—not only from digital cameras but from memory cards and wireless devices, like PDAs and camera phones. Others connect through your PC. Some even allow you to print labels and photos onto special CDs! But primarily, you are freed to print stunningly clear, professional-looking, borderless pictures without leaving home. See brands from, among others, Epson, Canon, and Hewlett Packard.
Introduction
Authors: Dryfoos Joy G.
Published: November 2020

In addition to providing services, community schools need to be governed. In this part you will learn how one principal views the overall partnership and his role in a community school, Intermediate School 218. You will also learn more about other Children’s Aid Society (CAS) schools and how they came into being. The all-pervasive subject of financing is treated by my coeditor, who believes that it is possible to sustain these efforts, but not without constant attention to seeking new funds. Finally, we learn about various attempts to evaluate the CAS schools. As would be expected, the principal is in charge. A full-service community school cannot exist unless the principal is willing to facilitate the arrangement. At the same time, this model cannot be implemented without the presence of a full-time community school director or coordinator (see Negrón, ch. 3 in this volume). The principal works closely with the community school director to integrate new services with what is already there. In one such community school, the principal shares her office with the coordinator, ensuring regular communication. The role of the lead agency, in this case CAS, is extremely important. Just as the principal and the school staff have to support the community school concepts, so do the lead agency and its personnel. CAS is a long-established social service agency that also operates homemaker services, adoption and foster care programs, medical and mental health services, and other similar services. When such an infrastructure is already in place to support community schools, the whole enterprise is enriched, and the transformation of the traditional school into a community school is expedited by back-up from the lead agency’s “home office.” Such matters as payroll, benefits, public relations, and, most important, resource development can be addressed by existing staff members. The expansion of CAS’s community schools initiative—from one community school to ten in a single decade—made it clearer than ever that one size does not fit all. Adapting the model to various populations and conditions and to a wide range of partners requires sensitivity and flexibility on everyone’s part.
Managing the Growth of Community Schools
Authors: Kim Hayin
Published: November 2020

Essential to a community school’s success is a committed partnership among the school and school district, community organizations, and parents—a partnership that makes students’ academic success a shared responsibility and a shared goal. These partners come together to provide three key sets of supports and opportunities: (1) a strong, coherent core instructional program during the regular school day; (2) supports and services that address and seek to remove barriers to learning; and (3) enrichment opportunities during nonschool hours that build students’ motivation and capacity to succeed in school. Table 11.1 illustrates this concept through a graphic representation of supports and opportunities offered by New York community schools. After the early success of the work at Intermediate School (IS) 218 and Primary School (PS) 5 in Washington Heights, The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) received scores of requests from principals around New York City who wanted their schools to become CAS community schools. Deciding how to respond to these requests became a major issue for CAS, because our intention from the beginning was to enter into a long-term partnership with each school—which meant that the agency was committing itself to sustaining each partnership for multiple years, if not forever. The financial implications of each decision were clear: we needed to build slowly and carefully, with a view toward long-term sustainability. In our strategic plans and discussions with CAS trustees and funders, managing the growth of community schools was an explicit goal. Furthermore, we recognized that implementation of the CAS community school model must focus on adaptation, not replication. This meant that, as we added schools (at the rate of roughly one per year), we would conduct a local needs and resource assessment and make a plan that was responsive to the unique assets and needs of each school and its surrounding community. From March 1992 through June 2003, CAS worked in close partnership with the New York City public schools to develop ten community schools—five in the Washington Heights neighborhood of northern Manhattan, two in East Harlem (also in Manhattan), and three in the South Bronx.
Looking to the Future
Authors: Dryfoos Joy G. , Quinn Jane
Published: November 2020

It may seem strange in a chaotic political period to say that the community school movement is alive, well, and growing. Yet such chaos can give rise to collaborative concepts. Out of adversity comes action, and that action is directed toward helping children succeed in an increasingly difficult environment of higher poverty levels, less health insurance, failing schools, more mental health problems, and a widening gap between social classes and races. It is not a pretty picture, but it is a challenging one. The Children’s Aid Society (CAS) is moving forward with its commitment to community schools. Although we thought we would stop at 10 school sites in New York City, during the 2003–2004 academic year we initiated three more—two in the Bronx and one on Staten Island. Our Technical Assistance Center is in great demand, hosting more than 600 visits in 2003 and responding to more than 500 requests for technical assistance. Also in 2003 we convened representatives from more than 60 of the national and international adaptation sites for a three-day practicum—a training and networking session at which we heard testimonials to success and stories about challenges. Many of the original adaptation sites have moved from one dynamic community school to a cluster of schools within their neighborhoods or districts. And some of these original adaptation sites have matured to the point of providing guidance to other schools that want to emulate their success. There are now more than 200 adaptation sites—community schools based on the CAS model—in the United States and other countries. We are often asked, “Just how many community schools are there in this country?” We have a reasonable census of CAS sites (13) and adaptations (215), but that is only the beginning of a count. The question is difficult to answer because there are so many versions of other models and so many schools without any of these components that nevertheless call themselves “community schools.” We have tried to construct a continuum along which schools can measure themselves.
Burkina Faso: Rural Development and Patronage
Authors: Freidberg Susanne
Published: November 2020

From the air, the international airport in Ouagadougou, the capital of Burkina Faso, does not appear to be in the middle of anything except the desert. But every winter it becomes a center of intense activity and often high tension, as green beans from throughout the country pour into the airport packhouses. If all goes well, the beans are flown out the same day they are trucked in, and end up on dinner tables in France. In fact, things often do not go well, and so many green beans end up in soup pots closer to home. Indeed, the abundance of delicate green beans found in Burkina Faso’s marketplaces during January and February testifies to the frequent failures of the country’s export ambitions. Green beans and other garden vegetables were brought to colonial Burkina Faso (then Upper Volta) in the early 20th century by French missionaries and colonial administrators who, apart from their personal interest in having these familiar foods available, saw the introduction of French vegetable gardening as part of their civilizing mission in Africa. They did not care much whether Africans ate à la francais, but they did hope that market gardening (or maraichage) would help feed growing colonial towns and, in the process, create a modern, industrious, prosperous and thus stable African peasantry. Decades later in independent Upper Volta, remarkably similar goals fueled government and foreign development agency efforts to promote irrigated vegetable production for overseas markets. Especially when repeated droughts in the 1960s and 1970s raised concerns about long-term climate change, it appeared that peasants needed the income that irrigated, high-value export crops could provide in order to make up for possible shortfalls in rainy season staple grain production. So with generous foreign technical and financial assistance, the country’s state-run peasant cooperatives became in the late 1960s some of sub-Saharan Africa’s earliest exporters of airfreight fresh green beans. For many years, its export volume was second only to Kenya’s. By the late 1990s, Burkina Faso’s green bean farmers missed the days when their crops were known as “green gold.”
Endings
Authors: Parini Jay
Published: November 2020

It’s spring in the academic village, with blossoming fruit trees all over campus, the ground smelling of fresh mud, and once again my thoughts turn to summer. I think of those long, delicious months when, without the telephone ringing and student papers sitting on my desk ungraded, without faculty meetings and office hours, without classes to prepare, I’m free again to work exclusively on my own writing. My e-mails will dwindle to communications with a few good friends. Some mornings, I might even sleep in. But spring also brings with it a small feeling of dread. “April is the crudest month,” wrote T. S. Eliot—a memorable line. I think of it again as lawn mowers drone outside the open windows of my classroom, a sweet wind blows papers off my desk, and I begin to anticipate the end of another school year, with the many losses that inevitably attend that moment, marked so vividly by the graduation ceremony, when half a dozen kids I had really come to like, even love, wave to me from the platform as they proceed into their adult life, diplomas in hand. I’m aware that one or two from each class will remain friends forever, but I know as well that there will be many— the majority of those whom I genuinely considered friends—who won’t. It’s not their fault, I tell myself. They will get busy. Soon spouses and children will lay claim to their attention. I’m just a passing figure in their lives; they know this, and I know it. It’s not as bad as it sounds, given the demands I feel myself toward spouse and family, toward a circle of friends that has widened decade by decade. There is only so much attention to go around. I begin to feel this little dread coming on in late March, when the spring snows in Vermont begin to thaw. Huge piles of the stuff grow wet at the edges, melting slowly, so that by the middle of April there are puddles everywhere, and I have for the first time to wear my waders to school.
Posttraumatic Stress and Posttraumatic Growth in Childhood Cancer Survivors and Their Parents
Authors: Stuber Margaret L.
Published: November 2020

Few would disagree that a diagnosis of childhood cancer is shocking and frightening to the child and to the child’s family. In addition to the sudden and dreadful diagnosis, the intensive and often lengthy treatment is extremely stressful. The combination of diagnosis and subsequent treatment frequently leaves children and parents feeling helpless. However, life-threatening illness has historically been categorized as stressful but not “traumatic” in the way that interpersonal violence or natural disasters are traumatic. In fact, the third edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-III) (American Psychiatric Association [APA], 1987) stated that “chronic medical illness” was specifically excluded as a potential precipitant of a formal psychiatric diagnosis of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). This was important because PTSD is the only diagnosis in the DSM that includes a cause or precipitating event within the diagnostic criteria rather than simply offering a description of typical symptoms. Clinical observations challenging the perception that cancer was not sufficiently “traumatic” to precipitate the symptoms of PTSD began to be described in the psychiatric literature in the 1980s and prompted a series of field trials in preparation for the fourth edition of the DSM. A group of 24 adolescent cancer survivors and their mothers were interviewed, and findings revealed that a substantial minority of both groups met criteria for a diagnosis of PTSD (Alter et al., 1996). Life-threatening medical illness was subsequently included as a potential precipitating event for PTSD in the text of the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) in 1994. The accompanying text specified not only that the person experiencing the medical life threat might respond with posttraumatic stress but also that this might also be a precipitant for family members. This allowed a common framework for researchers to investigate posttraumatic stress responses to medical life threat in adult patients, spouses of patients, and childhood patients, their siblings, and their parents. In this chapter, we review the growing body of literature that has emerged regarding the epidemiology, correlates, and predictors of posttraumatic stress symptoms in those exposed to medical life threat.
Prevention and Cessation of Tobacco Use and Exposure to Environmental Tobacco Smoke
Authors: Tyc Vida L.
Published: November 2020

Tobacco use remains the single most important preventable cause of premature death and disability in the United States and is a critical health issue for our nation’s youths. Cigarette smoking is the most common form of tobacco use among adolescents (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2001), with over 90% of adult smokers initiating smoking at or before age 19 years (Mowery, Brick, & Farrelly, 2000). Consequently, reduction of tobacco use during adolescence is especially critical before lifelong smoking habits are established. Current national health objectives for children and adolescents focus on reducing health risks related to tobacco use and exposure to secondhand smoke (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2000). Specific objectives include reducing the initiation of tobacco use among children and adolescents, reducing their average age of first use of tobacco products, increasing cessation attempts by current smokers, and reducing the proportion of children who are regularly exposed to tobacco smoke in the home. These health objectives are especially important for children and adolescents with cancer, who may be at even greater risk than their healthy peers for tobacco-related health problems because of their compromised health status (Hollen & Hobbie, 1996). Exposure to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) has similar serious consequences for the child with cancer (Alligne & Stoddard, 1997; Cook & Strachan, 1999). Interventions that attempt to prevent, reduce, or terminate tobacco use and ETS exposure could therefore contribute to a decrease in the morbidity and mortality of patients treated for cancer. This chapter reviews the prevalence of tobacco use, the magnified health effects associated with tobacco use, and some of the correlates associated with tobacco use among young patients treated for cancer. We also describe tobacco interventions that have been conducted with this population and discuss how health care providers involved in the treatment or long-term care of childhood cancer patients can assist their high-risk patients in making healthy lifestyle choices, including the decision to abstain from, reduce, or quit smoking and to avoid environmental tobacco exposures. Tobacco use is a significant behavioral health problem that poses serious health risks for young patients treated for cancer.
Training in Pediatric Psychosocial Hematology/Oncology
Authors: Clay Daniel L. , David Elkin T.
Published: November 2020

As evidenced by the chapters in this book, psychosocial hematology/oncology (hem/onc) presents a wide array of complex problems and issues for the patients, their families, and the health care team. Because the diseases are unpredictable and often life-threatening, treating the whole child effectively requires a multidisciplinary team of health care professionals working in concert to address the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of affected families. Working effectively on such a team requires specialized training to manage disease-specific issues such as pain, complexities of multidisciplinary work, and the stress resulting from working with severe and sometimes terminal illnesses. In general, there are many complex roles for psychosocial service providers in the delivery of health care (Brown et al., 2002), and for these reasons, the roles in the hem/onc setting can be even more important and complex. The purposes of this chapter are to (a) describe the phases of training, (b) discuss issues that have an impact on the training process, and (c) describe key content areas in which training is necessary to reach an acceptable level of competence for working in the area of psychosocial hem/onc. Although the team members consist of various health care professionals and subspecialties such as physicians, nurses, dieticians, psychologists, and social workers, this chapter focuses on graduate and postdoctoral training of psychosocial service providers such as psychologists, social workers, and counselors. However, many of the issues we discuss also apply to training in the other professions at both the preservice and postgraduate levels. This chapter consists of two main sections: the first section deals with the process of training, and the second addresses the content of specialized training in hem/onc. The first section begins with a detailed description of training that incorporates a developmental model of knowledge and skill acquisition. We then discuss current trends that have a direct impact on the implementation of training methods and the settings in which clinical training takes place. The second section includes a description of several content areas specific to the needs of patients and health care staff working in hem/onc. These areas address specific knowledge and skill domains and the methods by which these domains can be integrated into the training model.