Category: Education

Researchers at the University of Vermont have teamed up with scientists around the U.S. to tackle agriculture’s grand challenge of feeding the world’s growing population while conserving natural resources and reducing its environmental footprint. Using precision agriculture tools, network analysis, artificial intelligence and machine learning, the project will analyze cover cropping strategies at over 100 farms throughout the East Coast and Midwest and survey farmers and advisors across 20 states with the goals of improving profit for farmers and building more sustainable food systems.

The five-year project has been awarded $10 million from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI)’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems program, the nation’s leading and largest competitive grants program for agricultural sciences. The project is one of eight awarded and involves nearly 100 scientists from 35 institutions across the U.S. UVM Extension professor Heather Darby and UVM Food Systems and Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences assistant professor Meredith Niles both serve on the project’s executive committee, providing leadership in regenerative agriculture and the social science aspect of the research.

“There’s nothing else like this, it’s very unique,” said Darby, who will be leading on-farm trials at 10 different sites in Vermont starting next year. “This is really taking the research and knowledge that we have and being able to deploy it on hundreds and hundreds of farms across our region.” 

Cover crops, often plants such as legumes, grasses and brassicas, are grown to protect and regenerate soil and improve water nutrient and pest management, but are not typically harvested for cash income. Combining cover crops with sustainable agricultural practices like reduced tillage, diversified crop rotations and integrated weed management can increase soil health, allowing for more climate-resilient production of food and fiber and greater yields for farmers. However, cover cropping strategies may vary depending on weather, climate and growing conditions.

Advances in sensor technology, on-farm monitoring systems and cloud-based platforms have enabled massive amounts of data to be collected in real time. The research team will deploy these technologies across its 100 field trial sites and use machine learning and artificial intelligence to begin to predict optimal strategies for farmers based on their crop and environmental conditions.

“There’s power in numbers. The goal is to be able to amass consistent data from sites all over the East Coast and Midwest so we can actually start to predict how much nitrogen people get from cover crops and how much water holding capacity is created from growing cover crops,” said Darby. “We’re developing decision support tools that will take the data and make it palatable for farmers. That’s who we’re doing this work for,” said Darby.

To better assist farmers, Niles will be conducting a national network analysis to understand how and where farmers receive information about cover cropping strategies and how their networks may influence uptake and maintenance of cover crops.

“Never before have researchers mapped farmer information networks for cover crops at this scale,” said Niles. 

The network analysis, which will be conducted through a series of surveys to farmers and agricultural advisors, will be deployed across 20 states. Field trials are expected to begin in Vermont in late summer 2020 and the farmer surveys will begin in 2021.

Source: UVM News

The New York Council of Trout Unlimited, a national non-profit that conserves, protects and restores North America’s coldwater fisheries and their watersheds, has given UVM professor Ellen Marsden its 2019 Professional Achievement Award.

The group honored Marsden, a wildlife and fisheries biologist in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, for her decades-long work studying trout populations in Lake Champlain and sea lampreys, their natural predators.

In a ceremony held in the atrium of the George D. Aiken Center on the UVM campus, Bill Wellman, a board member for the Lake Champlain chapter of the New York Council, made the award, presenting Marsden with a commemorative plaque.

“Dr. Marsden is a fantastic researcher and exemplary teacher and a writer who shares her discoveries and insights freely and generously with everyone from the scientific community to toddlers,” Wellman said. “Her professional achievements have been recognized by the many research grants she has received and by the numerous boards and panels she sits on, ranging from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission to the Aquatic Nuisance Species Task Force. It’s indeed our pleasure to present this award to an outstanding friend of the fisheries and an outstanding friend of New York State Trout Unlimited.”

“We’re very proud of Ellen and the long term impact her research has had on Lake Champlain,” said Nancy Mathews, dean of the Rubenstein School, who participated in the ceremony. “It can be felt from undergraduates going on to their own careers in fisheries to the many academic accolades she’s received to actual changes in policy that result from her work.”

In Marden’s recent work, she is studying the surprising return of wild lake trout to Lake Champlain.

The Professional Achievement Award is awarded by the New York State Council of Trout Unlimited, with one award available annually to  an outstanding professional in the field of fisheries science and conservation. The award typically is given to high achievers in the fields of fishery conservation, such as academics and professionals in the Fish and Wildlife Service and Department of Environmental Conservation.

The New York State Council of Trout Unlimited is composed of 36 chapters throughout New York State, with over 8,500 members. Marsden was nominated by the Lake Champlain Chapter, located in Plattsburgh N.Y.  Trout Unlimited is America’s oldest and largest cold water conservation organization.

Text of New York Council of Trout Unlimited Professional Achievement Award

Dr. Ellen Marsden has made significant and long-lasting contributions to New York State’s fish and their habitat by her exemplary scholarship, leadership and academic prowess.  Her career is one that has contributed in full measure to the knowledge of the ecology of Lake Champlain, New York State, and the nation as a whole.

Since joining the faculty at the University of Vermont in 1996, Dr. Marsden has made continuous and major contributions to the scientific knowledge of the fisheries of the Great Lakes, and especially to Lake Champlain.  She has been at the forefront of advancing fisheries knowledge on native species restoration efforts and the pernicious influences of invasive species.   Her work has been determinative in examining and explaining the fundamental aspects that regulate ecological structure in large lakes and their dynamics. 

Especially important for New York State conservationists and cold-water anglers, her work has helped unravel the secrets of how lake trout are reproducing in Lake Champlain despite high levels of thiaminase in their diets.  She has been a leader in restoration efforts for this fish utilizing artificial reefs.    Her efforts have contributed significantly to the survival and restoration of this fish in Lake Champlain and in other major water bodies. 

Of equal importance to our fisheries, and to North Country anglers, has been Dr. Marsden’s pioneering work in the modeling of sea lamprey life cycle dynamics in Lake Champlain. This predator has wreaked havoc on generations of lake trout and Atlantic salmon, and at various times has imperiled years of restoration efforts for both species.  Dr. Marsden’s work in this area has yielded major advances in understanding this invader and in developing new approaches to sea lamprey control.  This has been a major advance, not only for Lake Champlain, but also for other major water bodies, such as the Great Lakes and throughout the United States and Canada. 

Dr. Marsden is a fantastic researcher, an exemplary teacher, and a writer who shares her discoveries and insights with others in the scientific community and beyond freely and generously.   Author of over 119 peer-reviewed articles and book chapters, she has advised over 23 graduate students and PhD candidates in their academic growth.  Her professional acumen is recognized by the many grants she has received to further the conduct of her research, her many professional achievements as a member of numerous boards and panels, ranging from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission to the Aquatic Species Nuisance Species Task Force Ballast Water Program Effectiveness and Adequacy Criteria Committee. 

Any such outstanding professional should be recognized by her peers by suitable awards.  Such is indeed the case. Dr. Marsden had received numerous awards from her peers for her outstanding research and the exemplary manner in which it is presented.

The most recent of these major awards was the prestigious Christie-Loftus Award from the Great Lakes Fisheries Commission, received in 2019.  In presenting this award, Commissioner Dr. Bill Taylor, of Michigan State University, noted that “Dr. Marsden’s work has, for more than three decades, been at the forefront of science in both the Great Lakes and Lake Champlain Basins.” 

Dr. Marsden is no cloistered academic, unfamiliar with the real world that anglers and conservationists inhabit.  She is a frequent and applauded speaker at our Trout Unlimited chapter, with her presentations drawing some of our largest and most enthusiastic audiences.

Dr. Marsden portrays the best and the brightest in both our academic and conservationist worlds.  Her dedication, talents, and outstanding contributions to fisheries science and to Trout Unlimited make her a most worthy recipient of the 2019 New York State Council of Trout Unlimited Professional Achievement Award.

Source: UVM News

The U.S. economy may be expanding, but it’s taking the low road to growth that undermines wellbeing and may cause economic challenges in the future, according a new study published online in the Cambridge Journal of Economics that centers on the way different countries have responded to the growth of women in the labor force.

Stephanie Seguino, professor of Economics at the University of Vermont and co-author of the paper – with Elissa Braunstein of Colorado State University and Rachid Bouhia of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development –  says that, while women’s increasing labor force participation has contributed to worldwide economic growth, there are important qualifiers to that success.

At the heart of the new study is an economic concept called “social reproduction,” the unpaid and sometimes paid human care work – which often takes the form of parenting – that is required to produce and sustain a vibrant, well socialized labor force.

In the past economists have focused solely on education and training as the key elements of creating productive human capital. But the new paper, building on past work by the authors, cites social reproduction as being equally important to the creation of productive future workers.

Women provide the bulk of labor needed for social reproduction, so their entry into the labor force, while having a positive effect in aggregate, can have potentially negative impacts, the authors say. If governments do not work to redistribute and reduce child- and other care labor, it can mean either a time squeeze for women, who attempt to both work and care for their children and other family members, or a decline in human development, if care work is neglected.

“As women move into labor markets, attention must be paid to supporting and redistributing the burden of social reproduction. Countries that fail to do so pay a price – both in a decline in human welfare and in the slower economic growth that is a consequence of an unproductive, poorly socialized labor force,” Seguino said.

The high road not taken

The paper uses a series of metrics – including the gender wage gap, the extent and quality of private market care, the public availability of quality child care and men’s contribution to child care – to score countries on their overall commitment to social reproduction.

Fellow travelers with the U.S. on the low road, 12 in all, are Croatia, New Zealand, Israel, and Switzerland. The authors define the low road as one where rising wages and labor force participation for women may stimulate economic growth, but inadequate or expensive substitutes for caring labor for children undermine social reproduction, over-burdening women and compromising their contributions to the economy.

“The shorthand for these countries is ‘time squeeze,’” Braunstein said. “Women have no choice but to ‘do it all,’ which often means they are overworked, or investments in care decline. The result is a huge negative impact on overall welfare.”

In the high road countries – which include Norway, Denmark, Finland and France, eight in all – the opposite trends prevail. Women are paid well, there is high quality childcare provided by private entities and the government, and flexible family leave policies allow men to share in the care of children.

“We call these countries, ‘gender egalitarian,’” Seguino said, “because women engage in paid work and  are paid well, there are quality private and public options for childcare, so they aren’t asked to do double duty, and family leave policies allow men to share equally in unpaid labor in the home.”

There is some correlation between countries taking the low or high road and their rate of growth. In a working paper, Braunstein, Seguino and Altinger find that the more gender equal the distribution of social reproduction, the faster a country’s economic growth.

Economic repercussions

Investing  in social reproduction can have clear positive economic consequences, as well as those related to wellbeing. Underinvesting in social reproduction across a society can dramatically impact the quality of the future workforce and curtail economic growth as a result.

“If we’re going to take the positive step of moving women to the paid labor force, which is good for them and for the larger economy, we have to do it in such a way that it addresses the inadvertent outcome of the loss of caring labor,” Braunstein said.

Source: UVM News

Most people who experience severe trauma recover their health. But 23 percent develop PTSD, a difficult-to-treat illness that combines intrusive thoughts about the trauma, avoidance of reminders of it, low mood and an exaggerated startle reaction. Which trauma victims will develop the disorder and which will be spared is not well understood.

A study just published in the journal Depression and Anxiety both offers new clues on identifying potential PTSD candidates among the population of trauma sufferers and suggests potential interventions that could prevent its development.  

The study is the first to gather extensive data from trauma victims during the first 30 days after the traumatic event, a critical period says Matthew Price, associate professor of Psychological Sciences UVM and lead author of the study.

“Getting PTSD is not like the flu where you wake up one day with a virus and feel sick,” Price said. “It’s a complex system where a range of symptoms develop, build on themselves and influence each other over time. After about a month, the die is cast, so to understand and prevent PTSD, it’s very important to map the dynamics of how things develop early on.”

The nature of the disease has made that difficult, Price says. Researchers either had little access to trauma victims, who often left the hospital abruptly, or weren’t comfortable being interviewed numerous times during the acute post-trauma phase. 

The new study took a novel approach. Using a mobile phone app, a non-intrusive method of gathering information, researchers were able to text trauma victims a series of questions, which they answered when it was convenient, in each of the 30 days after the trauma event.

The questions were crafted so they yielded day-by-day information about the key symptoms that characterize PTSD and were asked in such a way that researchers could track their development over time.

Two independent tracks

Then the research team used a statistical technique called short term dynamic modeling to determine which symptoms acted as influencers, causing other symptoms to develop and gain strength, which symptoms arose from those influencers and which operated independently.

“For one series of symptoms, the symptom chain looked a lot like fear conditioning,” Price said. “People first had intrusive, unpleasant thoughts about what happened to them, which led them to avoid doing things that remind them of their trauma, and that avoidance led to hypervigilance.” The sequence reflects a commonly accepted theoretical framework for PTSD development.

But feelings of depression seemed to operate independently of the fear conditioning symptoms, Price said.

“Depression wasn’t influenced by other symptoms and wasn’t an influencer; it was off on its own and self-perpetuating.”

That’s very different from full blown PTSD, Price said, where fear conditioning and depression are tightly integrated, and suggests a treatment approach that is very different from what is currently done.            

“The most commonly used strategy right now is to wait and see,” he said. “The research shows that, by contrast – as challenging as it is to treat victims soon after the trauma – it’s critically important to intervene early to head off the development of full blown PTSD. Prevention is a preferred strategy because many individuals who go on to develop PTSD do not seek out treatment right away. Instead, these folks can suffer for months or years before getting the help they need.”

The research suggests that intervention could happen along two tracks, Price said.

On the hand one hand, patients could undergo a form of exposure therapy to address the fear-based cluster of symptoms. On the other, a more cognitive-based approach could address developing depression.

Which trauma victims are most likely to develop PTSD?

The research findings suggest that those who are “having a strong reaction to trauma cues, who shortly after a trauma seem to be very reactive to things that remind them of their trauma, would probably be good people to look out for,” Price says. 

But the questions around PTSD are still very much unanswered, Price said. 

“This research is trying to piece together what this process may look like as it unfolds so that we can start to develop treatments that might be able to deliver it in this very acute phase. There is much more work to do.”

Source: UVM News

Going pro early may be a no-brainer for exceptional, young basketball stars like former Duke freshman and 2019 NBA draft first-pick Zion Williamson. But a study in the “International Journal of Sport Finance” by two UVM sports-enthused professors proposes a new salary structure that might entice most other college players considering the NBA to graduate before trying their hand at going pro.

“Zion Williamson is a classic example of a strangely strong signal that foregoing the remaining time in college is rational—from a basketball perspective, we’re not talking about his education or degrees—but from a basketball learning perspective, he had nothing more to gain from playing for Duke. So he should go to the pros and get the contract,” says Michael J. Tomas III, finance professor at the University of Vermont and co-author of the study with UVM accounting professor Barbara Arel.

Noting that the average NBA career length is just 4.8 years, Arel and Tomas reimagined the NBA’s rookie salary scale—which currently awards the highest salary to the player picked first in the draft and dwindles down with each successive player picked—in a way that considers both draft pick position and class year.

“This is our attempt to show that you could alter the NBA draft schedule to try to incentivize students to stay. There’s been a big discussion about people leaving early to go to the NBA draft and I think that revolves around the idea of wanting to see them get an education,” says Tomas. 

Their study proposes a pay scale that locks in salary gains as athletes advance toward graduation and incorporates yearly bonuses into their salaries determined by class year. Specifically, it offers a drafted freshman 60 percent of the current NBA rookie salary base and ratchets up to 120 percent for a drafted graduate in that same position.

Inspired by a ratchet option or cliquet option in the finance industry, the sports-enthused professors say that ratcheting up rookies’ salaries this way would ultimately “provide the incentive for players to delay entering the draft until they are ready to contribute to the NBA, but still allows an early exercise decision to remain rational for the very top prospects,” like Williamson, for example, who are likely to be picked first and go on to earn multiple contracts throughout their NBA careers. For these players, the sooner they are drafted, the sooner they can earn non-rookie salaries and contracts.

Subsequently, the researchers argue, the NBA’s labor market would improve as a whole as drafted athletes enter the NBA more prepared for the professional league following those additional years of experience playing college basketball. Though the cost and burden of additional training would shift from the NBA to colleges and universities, those schools would retain top talent that might otherwise leave, while the NBA bears the brunt of the financial incentive that keeps players in college.

“With this system you wouldn’t have universities that are already facing financial difficulties, trying to pay players to come and make their sports teams better,” says Tomas, adding that it also maintains the competitive landscape and possibility for underdog victories and March Madness upsets that fans have come to appreciate.

“Ratcheting Up: Adjusting the Incentives in the NBA Draft,” by UVM’s Barbara Arel and Michael Tomas, is featured in the November issue of the “International Journal of Sport Finance.”

Source: UVM News

As critics weigh in on the best work of 2019, Emily Bernard, Julian Lindsay Green & Gold Professor in UVM’s Department of English, has not gone unrecognized. Her recent collection of essays Black is the Body: Stories from My Grandmother’s Time, My Mother’s Time, and Mine was named today by Kirkus as one of the “Best Books of 2019 to Fight Racism and Xenophobia.” The book also was named one of the top ten “unputdownable reads” of 2019 by noted author and critic Maureen Corrigan. Corrigan cited Bernard’s book on the December 3^rd edition of Fresh Air, the daily WHYY program hosted by Terry Gross and heard in NPR stations across the country. 

“Bernard writes with depth, poetic intensity and humor about growing up Black in the South and living and teaching in the snow globe of Vermont,” Corrigan notes. “Her personal essays on race never hew to the same or expected paths.”  

Kirkus declares Black is the Body is “almost devoid of jargon. Instead, the writing is deeply felt, unflinchingly honest, and openly questioning.”

Bernard’s book unpacks her experience with race in America, having grown up Black in the south in Nashville and now raising two Black daughters in one of the whitest states in the United States.

In one essay, Bernard describes overhearing her twin daughters, who were five at the time, chat about a commercial on TV during Black History Month. 

“One of them says to the other one, ‘See, we’re Black.’ And the other one says, ‘No, we’re brown,’ pointing to her skin. And the first one says, ‘No. Well, yes, but they call it Black,”’ recalls Bernard. 

She remembers being impressed with their learning at the time, but also being struck by the fact that she had not yet taught them about race, and how different their lessons would be from hers growing up.

“I realized my introduction to the language of race was about trauma. It was racism. I learned that I was Black. I learned that I was always in danger. I learned that was I vulnerable,” she says. She likens her adolescent years and progressive Nashville community to “cogs on the great wheel of that whole machine. It was an important time, but it was also a scary time.”

Bernard holds a B.A. and Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. Her essays have been reprinted in Best American Essays, Best African American Essays, and Best of Creative Non-fiction. Her first book Remember Me to Harlem: The Letters of Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten, was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year.

Source: UVM News

To most people, last summer’s breach of Capital One, which exposed the financial records of nearly 106 million of the San Francisco-based bank’s customers, was more of the same: the latest in a numbing string of hacks that seem to threaten personal security more every year.

But in an important way, it was different – and more alarming – than past hacks, like the Equifax breach of 2017.

Capital One stores its customer data not on computers it owns that are housed on its premises but, in a trend that has leapfrogged traditional cybersecurity defenses, in “the cloud,” immense clusters of offsite servers managed by third parties.

“There’s been a lot of progress in defending internal computer systems against external attack, the way you’d secure a castle,” said Chris Skalka, chair of UVM’s Computer Science department and director of the university’s Center for Computer Security and Privacy. “But cloud security is very different and presents entirely new challenges.”

At the frontlines of this new cybersecurity war is a company founded and led by UVM alum Brian Ahern called Threat Stack, which Forbes magazine profiled as an emerging leader in cloud based security that is “eating the lunch” of legacy firms like IBM. Last year the company saw its revenues grow 100 percent and now has 150 employees in its Boston headquarters.       

“We are in the midst of a massive migration to the cloud,” said Ahern, who graduated from UVM in 1990 with a degree in electrical engineering. “Most of the companies in the process of migrating are having difficulty understanding where their data –  particularly sensitive information – is located, which is a significant risk both for organizations and their customers. Threat Stack was developed specifically to solve the unique security challenges of the cloud, so we’ve been able to drive the pace of innovation in the cloud security space.”

AI-Enhanced

This fall Threat Stack and UVM began a relationship with the potential to offer significant benefits to both the company and the university.

Skalka, fellow Computer Science faculty member Joe Near and postdoctoral student John Ring have begun a project designed to enhance Threat Stack’s threat assessment process with artificial intelligence that could make cloud-based cybersecurity more efficient and accurate and lengthen the company’s lead in the marketplace. Threat Stack has provided $100,000 to support the research project, which will subsidize a fellowship for Ring.

This fall Ring was embedded at the firm for two weeks to learn its technology first-hand. He and his UVM colleagues are now conducting research to determine if they can use machine learning to prioritize the anomalies Threat Stack’s software identifies as potential threats, some of which are false positives, so human oversight can better concentrate on those that deserve attention. If the project is successful, UVM’s work may allow the company to more reliably identify false negatives, as well.  

The work is a good match for UVM’s expertise, Skalka said. 

“We have a track record in cybersecurity and in using machine-learning to preserve privacy in large, cloud-based data sets,” he said.

In the classroom

Partnering with the company offers the university another advantage: a chance to bring leading edge cloud-based cybersecurity expertise to UVM computer science classrooms.

Like the cybersecurity industry itself, computer science departments at most universities have been slow to adapt their cybersecurity curriculum to the growing ubiquity of the cloud.

With Ahern’s and Threat Stack’s help, that could change. Skalka has already invited Threat Stack’s chief security officer, Sam Bisbee, to present a lecture in an advanced Computer Science class next spring.  

“We’re optimistic that the academic partnership can evolve and grow,” he said.Ahern sees clear benefits for UVM. “Today’s workforce has a lot of cloud experts and a lot of security experts but very few cloud security experts,” he said. “Incorporating cloud security in UVM’s computer science curriculum is great for students and something businesses will be looking for as cloud usage continues to grow.” 

Skin in the Game

The UVM/Threat Stack partnership is the latest pairing in a program called the UVM Business Fellowship Program developed by the university’s Office of the Vice President for Research, which contributed $40,000 to the partnership.

“The goal of the program is to build relationships between businesses and the university,” said Richard Galbraith, UVM’s vice president for research. “In this case, it’s the ideal situation. Both the company and UVM have invested in the relationship. We both have skin in the game; that kind of commensal arrangement is good for everyone and increases the chance of success.”

“Collaboration between business and higher education is a critical piece of moving technology and business forward,” Ahern said. “By collaborating with leading universities like UVM, companies like Threat Stack can accomplish two goals simultaneously: continue driving the pace of innovation and preparing students for the reality of a cloud-first job market.”

Source: UVM News