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Classification of remotely sensed imagery for reliable land use and land cover (LULC) remains a challenge in areas where spectrally similar LULC features occur. For example, bare soils of harvested crop fields in agricultural watersheds exhibit spectral characteristics similar to high-intensity developed regions and impede an accurate classification. The goal of this study is to improve the accuracy of LULC classification of satellite imagery for the Big Sunflower River Watershed, Mississippi using ancillary data, multiple classification methods, and a post-classification correction (PCC). To determine the best approach, the methodology was applied to Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) imagery during the growing season and post-harvest. Imagery for the growing season was acquired on 25 August 2015, and post-harvest was acquired on 7 January 2018. Three classification methods were applied: maximum likelihood (ML), support vector machine (SVM), and random forest (RF). LULC imagery was classified as open water, woody wetlands, harvested crop, rangeland, cultivated crop, high-intensity developed, and mid-low intensity developed areas. Ancillary data such as normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI), thematic maps of urban areas, river networks, transportation networks, high-resolution National Agriculture Imagery Program (NAIP) imagery, Google Earth time-series data, and phenology were used to determine the training dataset. Initially none of the three classification methods performed adequately. Hence, a post-classification correction (PCC) was implemented by masking and applying a majority filter using thematic maps of urban areas. Once PCC was implemented, the accuracies from each of the classification methods increased significantly with the SVM classification method performing best in both the growing season and post-harvest with an overall classification accuracy of 93.5% with a Kappa statistic of 0.88 in the post-harvest imagery and an overall classification accuracy of 84% with a Kappa statistic of 0.789 in the imagery from the growing season. It was found that SVM was the best classification method while PCC is an effective strategy to implement when dealing with spectrally similar LULC features. The use of SVM together with PCC increased the reliability of the information extracted. Strategies from this study can help to evaluate the LULC in agricultural and other watersheds.

In order to gain insights into how the effects of the uneven adoption of Medicaid expansion varies across the rural/urban spectrum and between racial/ethnic groups in the United States, this research used the fertility question in the 2011-2015 American Community Survey to link infants' records to their mothers' household health insurance status. This preliminary exploration of the Medicaid expansion used logistic regression to examine the probability that an infant will be born without health insurance coverage. Overall, the states that adopted Medicaid expansion improved the health insurance coverage for households with infants. However, rural households with infants report lower percentages of coverage than urban households with infants. Furthermore, the rural/urban gap in health insurance coverage is wider in states that adopted the Medicaid expansion. Additionally, Hispanic infants remain significantly less likely to have health insurance coverage compared to Non-Hispanic White infants. Understanding infant health insurance coverage across ethnic/racial groups and the rural/urban spectrum will become increasingly important as the U.S. population transitions to a minority-majority and also becomes more urban. Although not a perfect solution, our findings showed that the Medicaid expansion of health insurance coverage had a mainly overall positive effect on the percentage of U.S. households with infants who have health insurance coverage.

This essay investigates Haywood’s insertion of songs into her fictional works. In it, I argue that Haywood’s use of songs evolves over time from a rhetorical, narratological function to a dramatic, performative function. Haywood first adapts, from her translation of French romances, the rhetorical and narratological strategies that are present in French literary works. Songs inserted into prose fiction present the reader with an aphoristic moment that offers the reader a lyrical lesson. With Haywood’s mid-century domestic novel, The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, she continues to experiment with the aphoristic function of songs and includes multi-medial references to ballad tunes. In so doing, she blends the aesthetic strategies of French romance with the dramatic, performative strategies of ballad operas. These inserted songs, then, offer the reader an interpretive lens through which to analyze The History of Miss Betsy Thoughtless, a reading which has Jacobite undertones.

As museums serve as major tourist destinations, ensuring the sustainable presentation of exhibits addressing social justice issues, such as colonial legacies, is increasingly critical. This study examines how one destination museum engaged with its colonial past through a temporary exhibit designed to challenge traditional narratives and amplify marginalized perspectives. The primary objective is to assess whether such temporary interventions foster lasting engagement with colonial histories or risk becoming fleeting gestures that ultimately reinforce hegemonic narratives. Using Gramsci’s theory of hegemony and the concept of moral licensing as analytical frameworks, this research systematically analyzes the content of both original and supplementary exhibit labels to evaluate their impact on visitor engagement with colonial histories. Specifically, this study addresses two key research questions: (RQ1) What new historical narratives and perspectives on colonialism did visitors encounter through the inclusion of supplementary museum labels addressing colonial legacies? (RQ2) What insights can be drawn from the addition and subsequent removal of these labels to inform future strategies for fostering sustained critical engagement with social justice issues, particularly colonial histories, in museum settings? Findings indicate that the addition of supplementary labels provided tourists with a deeper, more critical understanding of the museum’s colonial history and helped disrupt hegemonic narratives. However, as the exhibit was temporary, the removal of these labels revealed the risks of moral licensing, where short-term efforts may justify a return to dominant perspectives. This research contributes to the literature by demonstrating that to effectively and sustainably engage visitors with social justice issues, destination museums must integrate marginalized narratives into permanent or recurring exhibits. While even modest interventions, such as additional museum labels, can challenge established narratives, sustained efforts are essential to ensure that tourists continue engaging with critical social justice issues.

This study uses the Rural Utah Community Study (RUCS) to explore how social sustainability shapes a community’s approach to environmental sustainability. The results indicate that respondents who feel attached to and are satisfied with their community had a more positive relationship with the natural environment than those who were dissatisfied with their communities. We also find evidence that social ties, measured by the number of people known by their first name in the community, positively influence perceptions of the environment, and that a significant link exists between environmental sustainability and a higher sense of community belonging.

High rates of Hispanic fertility raise an important question: Do Hispanic newborn babies start life's race behind the starting line, poor and disadvantaged? To address this question, we link the newborn infants identified with the new fertility question in the 2006–2010 American Community Survey (ACS) to the poverty status of mothers. Our results document the disproportionately large share (40 percent) of Hispanic babies who are born into poverty. The prospect of poverty is especially high in new Hispanic destinations, especially those in rural areas. For Hispanic newborn babies, poverty cannot be reduced to supply-side explanations that emphasize maladaptive behavioral decision-making of parents, that is, nonmarital or teen childbearing, low educational attainment, acquisition of English language skills, or other dimensions of human capital. Hispanics in new destinations often start well behind the starting line—in poverty and with limited opportunities for upward mobility and an inadequate welfare safety net. The recent concentration of Hispanic poverty in new immigrant destinations portends continuing intergenerational inequality as today's newborn infants make their way to productive adult roles.

Aim: Bypass, or utilizing healthcare outside of one's community rather than local health care, can have serious consequences on rural healthcare availability, quality, and outcomes. Previous studies of the likelihood of healthcare bypass used various individual and community characteristics. This study includes measures for individuals and communities, as well as place-based characteristics. The authors introduce the Social Vulnerability of Place Index (SoVI) - a well-established measure in disaster literature - into healthcare studies to further explain the impact of place on healthcare selection behavior. Additionally, with the use of open-ended questions, this study explains why people choose to bypass. By including each of these measures, this study provides a more nuanced and detailed understanding of how individual healthcare selection is affected by the privilege of the individual, community ties, place of residence, and primary motivator for bypass. Methods: A systematic random sample of residents from 25 rural towns in the western US state of Utah were surveyed in 2017 in the Rural Utah Community Survey. After accounting for missing data, the total sample size was 1061. This study used logistic regression to better predict the likelihood of rural healthcare bypass behavior. Measures associated with community push factors (dissatisfaction with various local amenities), community pull factors (friends in community and length of residence), individual ability (demographics, self-reported health, and distance to a hospital), and SoVI, were added to the models to examine their impact on the likelihood of bypass. The SoVI was made using census data with variables that measure both social and place inequality. Each town in the study received a SoVI score and was then categorized as having low, mean, or high social vulnerability. Qualitative open-ended responses about healthcare selection were coded for explanations given for bypassing. Results: The pooled model showed that bypass was more likely amongst residents who were dissatisfied with local health care and more likely for females. Breaking bypass down, according to SoVI, provides a more nuanced understanding of bypass. For people living in low socially vulnerable areas, privileges such as graduating college made them more likely to bypass. For high socially vulnerable areas, privilege did not help people bypass, but disadvantages such as aging made residents less likely to bypass. Thus, by introducing the SoVI into healthcare literature, this study can compare healthcare selection behaviors of residents in low vulnerable towns, average vulnerable towns, and highly vulnerable towns. Additionally, the analysis of open-ended responses showed patterns explaining why people bypass. Conclusion: Policymakers and public health workers can use the SoVI to better target their healthcare outreach. Reasons for bypass include quality, selection, consistency, cost of insurance, one-stop shop, and confidentiality. Rural clinics can help residents avoid the need to bypass by improving in these areas and thus gaining patients and minimizing the risk of closure. Healthcare policymakers should focus resources on high socially vulnerable places as well as underprivileged people in low socially vulnerable places.

The excited state lifetime of a fluorophore together with its fluorescence emission spectrum provide information that can yield valuable insights into the nature of a fluorophore and its microenvironment. However, it is difficult to obtain both channels of information in a conventional scheme as detectors are typically configured either for spectral or lifetime detection. We present a fiber-based method to obtain spectral information from a multiphoton fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) system. This is made possible using the time delay introduced in the fluorescence emission path by a dispersive optical fiber coupled to a detector operating in time-correlated single-photon counting mode. This add-on spectral implementation requires only a few simple modifications to any existing FLIM system and is considerably more cost-efficient compared to currently available spectral detectors.

This paper used the communities bordering the Bears Ears National Monument, located in rural Southeastern Utah, USA, as a case study to better understand the impact that potential changes in land management have on gateway communities. Our case study is concerned with capturing changes in the sense of community based on discussions concerning potential changes to the community. We employ “psychological sense of community” measures to assess the effect on community residents. Survey data from three gateway communities are modeled using bivariate regressions and ordinary least squares regressions with control variables to assess the four components of PSC against opposition to the proposed changes to the Bears Ears National Monument. We find that potential changes to the land designation significantly affect the respondents’ psychological sense of community. Because public protected areas and gateway communities are linked socioeconomically, environmentally, and culturally, changes in land designations can significantly impact those who live there.

Seasonal changes of trace elements, nutrients, dissolved organic matter (DOM), and carbonate system parameters were evaluated over the largest deteriorating oyster reef in the Western Mississippi Sound using data collected during spring, summer, and winter of 2018, and summer of 2019. Higher concentrations of Pb (224%), Cu (211%), Zn (2400%), and Ca (240%) were observed during winter of 2018 compared to summer 2019. Phosphate and ammonia concentrations were higher (> 800%) during both summers of 2018 and 2019 than winter of 2018. Among the three distinct DOM components identified, two terrestrial humic-like components were more abundant during both spring (12% and 36%) and summer (11% and 33%) of 2018 than winter of 2018, implying a relatively lesser supply of humic-like components from terrestrial sources during winter. On the other hand, the protein-like component was more abundant during summer of 2019 compared to rest of the study period, suggesting a higher rate of autochthonous production during summer 2019. In addition, to their significant depth-wise variation, ocean acidification parameters including pH, pCO 2 , CO 3 2− , and carbonate saturation states were all higher during both summers of 2018 and 2019. The measured variables such as trace elements, organic carbon, suspended particulates, and acidification parameters exhibited conservative mixing behavior against salinity. These observations have strong implications for the health of the oyster reefs, which provides ecologically important habitats and supports the economy of the Gulf Coast.