In recent years there have been a number of major, large-scale studies in the United States on the high attrition rates for doctoral students in the humanities. The results of these studies reveal a significant gap between the humanities and other disciplines. None of the studies consulted has specifically considered the role of the library in supporting doctoral program completion, even though it is often characterized as the humanist‘s equivalent to the scientific laboratory. This...

This presentation was shared with the Committee of Columbia Library and Information Professionals on May 10, 2013, as an update from the Digital Science Center in the Science and Engineering Libraries.

A review of the history of the development of the Digital Social Science Center (DSSC) followed by a discussion of new service development.

Presentation/discussion at the Association of Southeast Research Libraries Spring 2012 Membership Meeting and Annual Meeting held April 11 – 12, 2012 in Charleston, South Carolina

Tree-ring width data are the prime source of high-resolution climate reconstructions covering recent millennia. Their variations, from year-to-year, are calibrated against regional instrumental data to evaluate the strength of associations with temperature and precipitation records, though the level of variance explained by climatic variables is frequently less than 50%. Among the remaining factors affecting tree growth, the influence of forest management for tree-ring width time-series used to resolve annual climate reconstructions remains relatively unexplored. We...

Here we report the first measurements of the H2O content of magmas and mantle xenoliths from the Big Pine Volcanic Field (BPVF), California, in order to constrain the melting process in the mantle, and the role of asthenospheric and lithospheric sources in this westernmost region of the Basin and Range Province, western USA. Melt inclusions trapped in primitive olivines (Fo82–90) record surprisingly high H2O contents (1.5 to 3.0 wt.%), while lithospheric mantle xenoliths record low...

We describe efforts to model the Holocene extent of the Rhone Glacier, Switzerland, using four paleoclimate records as templates for paleo-equilibrium line altitude to identify candidate driving mechanisms of glaciers in the Alps. We evaluate the success of each paleoclimate template by comparing cosmogenic 10Be and 14C concentrations in pro-glacial bedrock derived from modeled glacier configurations to measured values. An adequate fit can be obtained using mean summer insolation for 46.5°N. However, use of the...

Although differences exist between seasonal- and decadal-scale climate variability, predictability, and prediction, investment in observations, prediction systems, and decision systems for either time scale can benefit both.

High-resolution paleoclimate reconstructions are often restricted by the difficulties of sampling geologic archives in great detail and the analytical costs of processing large numbers of samples. Using sediments from Lake Braya Sø, Greenland, we introduce a new method that provides a quantitative high-resolution paleoclimate record by combining measurements of the alkenone unsaturation index (UK 37) with non-destructive scanning reflectance spectroscopic measurements in the visible range (VIS-RS). The proxy-to-proxy (PTP) method exploits two distinct calibrations: the...

Winter and summer Mediterranean precipitation climatology and trends since 1950 as simulated by the newest generation of global climate models, the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project phase 5 (CMIP5), are evaluated with respect to observations and the previous generation of models (CMIP3) used in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment Report. Observed precipitation in the Mediterranean region is defined by wet winters and drier summers, and is characterized by substantial spatial and temporal variability....

Close to thirty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Plyler v. Doe that undocumented children have the same right to access a public school education as children who are United States citizens or immigrant children lawfully admitted to the United States. Yet today, undocumented children still face significant hurdles when attempting to access a public school education. Moreover, new questions have arisen about the right of children on nonimmigrant visas to enroll in school....

Recent evidence from the ~ 201.5 Ma Central Atlantic Magmatic Province (CAMP) in the Newark rift basin demonstrates that this Large Igneous Province produced a transient doubling of atmospheric pCO2, followed by a falloff to pre-eruptive concentrations over ~ 300 kyr. This paper confirms the short-term findings from the Newark basin, and tests the million-year effects of the CAMP volcanism on Early Jurassic pCO2 from strata in the corollary Hartford basin of Eastern North America...

In situ cosmogenic 14C (in situ 14C) analysis from quartz-bearing rocks is a novel isotopic tool useful for quantifying recent surface exposure histories (up to ∼25 ka). It is particularly powerful when combined with longer-lived cosmogenic isotopes such as 10Be. Recent advances in the extraction of in situ 14C from quartz now permit the routine application of this method. However, only a few experiments to calibrate the production rate of in situ 14C in quartz...

We conduct a stratigraphic paleoecological investigation at a Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve (HRNERR) site, Tivoli Bays, spanning the past 1100 years. Marsh sediment cores were analyzed for ecosystem changes using multiple proxies, including pollen, spores, macrofossils, charcoal, sediment bulk chemistry, and stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes. The results reveal climatic shifts such as the warm and dry Medieval Warm Period (MWP) followed by the cooler Little Ice Age (LIA), along with significant anthropogenic...

The global financial crisis results from three factors: overly expansionary US monetary policy; inappropriate financial deregulation; and a financial panic following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. Asia is now experiencing a serious downturn as the result of falling consumption and exports, and an intensifying credit squeeze due to global deleveraging. Through appropriate monetary, financial, and public-investment policies, Asia can lead the world to recovery, in essence by replacing the declining consumption spending with increased public...

Did Jan van Eyck go to Italy? This is an old question about Van Eyck, and raises a number of important issues about his art. I do not intend to settle it here. Rather, I ask it because it casts into high relief a central issue in the ways we think about responses to art, and, more specifically, about the relations between observation and action imitation.

By exploiting the object-oriented dynamic composability of modern document applications and formats, malcode hidden in otherwise inconspicuous documents can reach third-party applications that may harbor exploitable vulnerabilities otherwise unreachable by network-level service attacks. Such attacks can be very selective and difficult to detect compared to the typical network worm threat, owing to the complexity of these applications and data formats, as well as the multitude of document-exchange vectors. As a case study, this paper focuses...

Presentation detailing repositories; subject, institutional, and other.

Masquerade attacks pose a grave security problem that is a consequence of identity theft. Detecting masqueraders is very hard. Prior work has focused on profiling legitimate user behavior and detecting deviations from that normal behavior that could potentially signal an ongoing masquerade attack. Such approaches suffer from high false positive rates. Other work investigated the use of trap-based mechanisms as a means for detecting insider attacks in general. In this paper, we investigate the use...

The International Research Institute for Climate and Society has been issuing experimental seasonal tropical cyclone activity forecasts for several ocean basins since early 2003. In this paper we describe the method used to obtain these forecasts, and evaluate their performance. The forecasts are based on tropical cyclone-like features detected and tracked in a low-resolution climate model, namely ECHAM4.5. The simulation skill of the model using historical observed sea surface temperatures (SSTs) over several decades, as...

The East African humanitarian community is looking for ways to better respond to the challenges presented by climate risks, including climate change, but is struggling to access appropriate and targeted scientific data that can inform their operations. Recent advances in science and technology have produced a variety of new tools for humanitarian organizations working on climate risk management. Humanitarian actors have an enormous opportunity to utilize these tools to inform risk reduction, preparedness and contingency...

ENSO (El Nino-Southern Oscillation) has a large influence on tropical cyclone activity. The authors examine how different environmental factors contribute to this influence, using a genesis potential index developed by Emanuel and Nolan. Four factors contribute to the genesis potential index: low-level vorticity (850hPa), relative humidity at 600hPa, the magnitude of vertical wind shear from 850 to 200hPa and potential intensity (PI). Using monthly NCEP Reanalysis data in the period of 1950-2005, we calculate the...

The purpose of this study is to examine the school choice process of Gentry Parents --white, middle and upper-middle class, highly-educated parents living in gentrifying neighborhoods -- to determine how, through the compounding effect of their many individual choices, a segregated urban school in a gentrifying neighborhood is able to transform into an integrated school, a process I call "tipping in." This study uses data from 52 formal interviews of Gentry Parents in three different...