221 Matching Annotations
  1. May 2017
    1. Jasper National Park

      Jasper National Park is a Canada's largest national park in the Rocky Mountains. Berger references how this national park was not intended to be one when it was first created and this is true. The region was at first a trading post for the North West Company and became an established park in 1907. Jasper National Park is well known for its wildlife and mountainous terrain. There is a diverse ecosystem there with animals such as moose, beavers, bears, and caribou. Berger talks about how a pipeline travelling through the park would be a dangerous situation for the environment and the creatures living there as well. This is a reasonable concern and since then there has been other efforts to stop development in the area. In 2014, the Canadian government stopped logging in an area just north of Jasper National Park in order to protect the caribou populations. This has been a massive problem in this region of southern Canada as "all 15 of Alberta's caribou herds have been shrinking rapidly, mostly due to habitat destruction by energy and forestry development." Berger is right when he claims that added infrastructure would disturb the wildlife. Not only does it impact the animals but it affects the natural pristine state of nature. Jasper National Park is a big attraction for ecotourism in the area and a large gas pipeline would definitely affect the natural beauty. "Environmentalists praise logging ban to help caribou." Globe & Mail [Toronto, Canada], August 13, 2013, A5. Global Reference on the Environment, Energy, and Natural Resources (accessed May 7, 2017). http://find.galegroup.com/grnr/infomark.do?&source=gale&idigest=6f8f4a3faafd67e66fa023866730b0a1&prodId=GRNR&userGroupName=bucknell_it&tabID=T004&docId=CJ339457927&type=retrieve&PDFRange=%5B%5D&contentSet=IAC-Documents&version=1.0. Aldwin Galapon, JA Media Solutions, April 2009, www.jamediasolutions.com. "Mammals of the Mt. Robson Area." Jasper National Park Alberta - Jasper travel, tours and hotels. April 16, 2009. Accessed May 07, 2017. http://www.jaspernationalpark.com/wildrob.html#.

    2. Sequoia National Park

      Sequoia National Park is a large land reserve in southern California which is home to the Sequoia National Forest. This forest is home to five out of the ten largest trees in the world and contains the single largest tree known as the General Sherman Tree. General Sherman stands at a whopping 275ft and a 14ft diameter at the middle of the tree. Sequoia National Park was founded in 1890 and was part of the initial effort to create more national parks to conserve the different habitats and ecosystems in the United States. The mission of the national parks was to bring awareness of the beauty of our environment. National parks were created to have designated areas that were set aside for humans to enjoy in a natural state. This concept still holds true today in parks as research shows "that this wilderness, in contrast to where most visitors live, is highly valued for clean air and water, natural sounds, low density of people, lack of motorized noise, and where evidence of human influence is relatively unnoticeable." Sequoia and other national parks around it are a large source of eco-tourism in the area. Eco-tourism is becoming a more prevalent force in the world today and some countries such as Costa Rica have much of their entire economy built on it.

      Watson A, Martin S, Christensen N, Fauth G, Williams D. The Relationship Between Perceptions of Wilderness Character and Attitudes Toward Management Intervention to Adapt Biophysical Resources to a Changing Climate and Nature Restoration at Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks. Environmental Management [serial online]. Septe](http://insert-your-link-here.com))mber 2015;56(3):653-663. Available from: GreenFILE, Ipswich, MA. Accessed April 25, 2017.

    1. National Research Council
      The National Research Council (NRC) is an organization within the Government of Canada dedicated to research and development. Today, the NRC works with members of the Canadian industry to provide meaningful research and development for many different types of products. The areas of research and development that the NRC participates in include aerospace, aquatic and crop resource development, automotive and surface transportation, construction, energy, mining, and environment, human health therapeutics, information and communications technologies, measurement science standards, medical devices, astronomy and astrophysics, ocean, coastal, and river engineering, and security and disruptive technologies. The NRC employs scientists, engineers, and business experts. The mission of the NRC is as follows: “Working with clients and partners, we provide innovation support, strategic research, scientific and technical services to develop and deploy solutions to meet Canada's current and future industrial and societal needs.” The main values of the NRC include impact, accountability, leadership, integrity, and collaboration. The most recent success stories of the NRC include research regarding “green buildings,” math games, mechanical insulation, and many more (Government of Canada 2017). Here is a link to their achievement page where these stories and more are posted: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/achievements/index.html. Here is a link to the NRC webpage: http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/index.html.  
      

      References

      Government of Canada. 2017. National Research Council Canada. May 5. Accessed May 8, 2017. http://www.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca/eng/index.html.

  2. Apr 2017
  3. enst31501sp2017.courses.bucknell.edu enst31501sp2017.courses.bucknell.edu
    1. American Serengeti,

      The ANWR is referred to as America’s Serengeti because it is home to polar bears, musk oxen, snow geese, and many other species that make up the greatest biological diversity in a protected area of the Arctic. It is smaller than South Carolina but its 1.5 million-acre coast contains 5% of Alaska’s oil, which former President George W. Bush had promised to drill for. This journal provides very useful maps, statistics, and analysis of social, economic, and environmental impact of drilling in the ANWR. Industry representatives claim the new technology is designed specifically for arctic conditions, but there is evidence that oil drilling in the ANWR will do more harm than good.

      Pelley, Janet. "Will Drilling for Oil Disrupt the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?" Environmental Science & Technology 35, no. 11 (June 1, 2001). Accessed March 26, 2017. doi:10.1021/es0123756. http://pubs.acs.org/doi/pdf/10.1021/es0123756

  4. Mar 2017
    1. university president public years center research million national latimes san executive major project board humanities

      The word humanities appears in this third-largest topic of the model. It is an institutional topic, with words about organizations, officers, governing structures, development and resources.

    1. Sebastian Gorka, President Trump’s top counter-terrorism adviser, is a formal member of a Hungarian far-right group that is listed by the U.S. State Department as having been “under the direction of the Nazi Government of Germany” during World War II, leaders of the organization have told the Forward.

      ...

      Gorka’s membership in the organization — if these Vitézi Rend leaders are correct, and if Gorka did not disclose this when he entered the United States as an immigrant — could have implications for his immigration status. The State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual specifies that members of the Vitézi Rend “are presumed to be inadmissible” to the country under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

    1. Sachs Harbour

      Sachs Harbour, located on Banks Island, is a small settlement in northern Canada visited by Berger during the Inquiry. The map below shows the location of Sachs Harbour and gives a sense of the breadth of the north Berger travelled. According to the Canadian census, only 112 people lived in the settlement in 2011. The vast majority of residents speak english today, though some report english and non-official language, probably a local indigenous language (Census). Permanent indigenous residents of the island are permitted subsistence hunting and trapping of wild animals to preserve their way of life (Parks Canada). Evidence of pre-Dorset inhabitation of the island has been uncovered and dated to 1500 BCE. Eastern Arctic Dorset, Thule, and Inuvialuit all have left physical traces on the island. European explorers came in the 1850s in an unsuccessful search for the northwest passage (Parks Canada).

      Sachs Harbour is the administrative site of Aulavik national park (Parks Canada). The park covers ~4600 square miles (12,000 square kilometers) and is home to a wide variety of land animals as well as the Thompsen river. Over 68,000 muskox make their home on Banks island, the highest concentration of muskoxen in the world with a significant portion living in the park itself. The Thompsen river is the northernmost navigable waterway and home to a wide variety of freshwater fish and related aquatic organisms. An isolated wilderness park, the land and organisms that live there are set aside to conserve "pristine arctic environment" (Parks Canada).

      (https://www.google.com/maps/place/Sachs+Harbour,+NT,+Canada/@70.6651894,-124.6126443,4.59z/data=!4m5!3m4!1s0x5109fd63f172c395:0xae7a914c6901e9c2!8m2!3d71.985123!4d-125.246483)

      1. Canada, Statistics. "Sachs Harbour, Northwest Territories (Code 6101041) And Northwest Territories (Code 61) (Table)". Statistics Canada. N.p., 2012. Web. 9 Mar. 2017.

      2. "Parks Canada - Aulavik National Park - Aulavik National Park Of Canada". 2013. Pc.Gc.Ca. http://www.pc.gc.ca/eng/pn-np/nt/aulavik/index.aspx.

    1. Petro Canada

      The Canadian government established Petro-Canada as a state owned Crown Corporation to manage oil resources in the country. This decision was aided by a variety of international pressures, mainly the OPEC (Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries) embargo in which the oil rich Middle Eastern countries prohibited the sale of oil to the U.S., Canada, U.K., Netherlands, and Japan due to U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur war. This oil embargo sparked a world shortage which spiked prices and caused Canada to look at moving towards more domestic sources of oil independence. With a new government, under the leadership of Trudeau, they adopted a more nationalist focus to their energy independence emphasizing the importance of Canadian industry. The Canadian government looked to reduce the influence of U.S. multinational oil companies in their own abundant oil fields in Alberta. Additionally, as a Crown Corporation, Petro-Canada was tasked to perform many tasks that wouldn’t be expected of privately owned companies. For example, the Canadian Government expected that Petro-Canada would explore the frontier for various, harder to access, resources like tar sands, heavy oil, or areas that would be difficult to develop transport chains. This charge from the state made it so Petro-Canada was more invested than private companies in exploring difficult to reach areas like the Mackenzie Delta in the mid 1970’s. The duties of the Crown Corporation were beyond simply providing energy for the nation, but also ensuring a sustainable future of energy independence.

      Annotation drawn from Fossum, John Erik. Oil, the State, and Federalism: The Rise and Demise of Petro-Canada as a Statist Impulse. Vol. 2. University of Toronto Press, 1997.

  5. Feb 2017
    1. Comparison of ITCD algorithms is challenging when there are differences in study focus, study area, data applied, and accuracy assessment method used. Before 2005, the few studies that compared methods generally tested approaches on a common dataset.

      This difficulty in comparing algorithms (due to differences in forest type, location, and assessment strategy used for different algorithms) indicates a clear need for set of open data and centralized assessment to allow different methods to be competed against one another to determine the best routes forward.

      This kind of approach has been very successful in other image analysis problems (e.g., ImageNET).

      The National Ecological Observatory Network data seems ideal for doing something like this. Data is/will be available for a variety of different systems and with LiDAR, Hyperspectral, RGB, and field data for large numbers of plots.

    2. Additionally, it is often challenging to apply an algorithm developed in one forest type to another area.

      This difficulty of applying across forest types is central to the challenges of developing approaches that can be applied to continental scale data collection like that being conducted by NEON. Overcoming this challenge will likely require incorporating ecological information into models, not just the remote sensing, and determining how to choose and adjust different approaches to get the best delineations possible based on information about the forest type/location.

    3. The most useful information that can be incorporated into ITCD studies is the expected crown size and stand density [25,67].

      This kind of data is available for NEON plots and so these methods could potentially be well leveraged with NEON data. This would be particularly true if the NEON plot data could be used to develop a spatial model for these features that could be used to predict their values across space.

  6. Jan 2017
    1. Jim Arkedis, formerly an intelligence analyst with the DoD.

      Below is how I would assess the credibility of the sources and allegations detailed in Buzzfeed’s recently-released dossier and an explanation of why I believe its two main allegations should be judged on their individual merits as credible with moderate-to-high confidence.

      No, that’s not the same as saying the allegations are 100 percent guaranteed to be true, but I think there’s enough evidence there that it would be irresponsible not to consider how this could impact our nation’s security and what, if anything, can be done to mitigate those potential impacts.

    1. It’s also important to acknowledge that a more isolated, more nationalist America helps Putin in his objectives even while it compromises our own. We need to accept that America was part of, and needs to be part of, a global system — and that this system is better, cheaper, and more powerful than any imagined alternatives. For many years, the United States has been the steel in the framework that holds everything together; this is what we mean by ‘world order’ and ‘security architecture,’ two concepts that few politicians try to discuss seriously with the electorate.

  7. Dec 2016
    1. al telephone.

      Helen Keller was associates with important such as Alexander Graham bell and President Roosevelt.

  8. May 2016
    1. The Defense Department is building a massive information-sharing system detailing national security personnel and individuals cleared for accessing U.S. secrets, to flag who among them might be potential turncoats or other "insider threats."
  9. Dec 2015
    1. Representatives of the White House seemed to listen attentively, but shared little about their thoughts. They maintained that President Obama’s position has not changed in the last few months. While they seemed well aware of our concerns about the technical infeasibility of inserting backdoors, they didn’t necessarily share them. That worried us a great deal.
    1. "There has always been a tension in the intelligence community between the intel side that wants to exploit the information from social media and the operational or the policy community that wants to do something to shut it down," Mike Flynn, who directed the Defense Intelligence Agency from 2012 to 2014
    1. "It makes zero sense to lock up this information forever," said Jeremiah Grossman, who founded cybersecurity firm WhiteHat Security. "Certainly there are past breaches that the public should know about, is entitled to know about, and that others can learn from."

      I used to think the most fanciful thing about the movie "War Games" was not the A.I., but the defense computer connected to a public network. But if industrial control systems can be reached by the Internet or other public lines -- then maybe the government is that stupid.

  10. Jun 2015