This Record of Decision (ROD) documents the decision by the National Marine Fisheries Service (hereinafter referred to as NOAA Fisheries) to select the Preferred Alternative set forth in the Alaska Groundfish Fisheries Final Programmatic Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (PSEIS) as its policy choice for the management of the Bering Sea and Aleutian Islands (BSAI) and Gulf of Alaska (G...

A modeling system may be required to predict an agent’s future actions even when confronted by inadequate or contradictory relevant evidence from observations of past actions. This can result in low prediction accuracy, or otherwise, low prediction rates, leaving a set of cases for which no predictions are made. This raises two issues. First, when maximizing prediction rate is preferable, what ...

We have all experienced it-course evaluations or learning assessments that are surprising. In July I participated in the 2008 Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience workshop, The Undergraduate Neuroscience Education: Interactions, Interdisciplines, and Curricular Best Practices, and was struck by a phrase in one of the plenary sessions. Referring to faculty willingness to try exciting new teach...

BACKGROUND The Sustainable Development Goals call for the effective governance of shared natural resources in ways that support inclusive growth, safeguard the integrity of the natural and physical environment, and promote health and well-being for all. For large-scale resource extraction projects -- e.g. in the mining sector -- environmental regulations and in particular environmental impact a...

We first describe the didactics of eight online courses. Each seminar mostly consists of 14 modules, which are essentially worked through in linear sequence, each module normally within a week. Didactics combine imparting of knowledge by direct instruction according to the nine instructional steps by Gagné, Briggs and Wager (1988) and an avoidance of ‘sluggish’ knowledge via stimulation of lear...

This paper focuses on special problems about essential didactical aspects for course instructors like defining and evaluating learning objectives within the e-learning situation. Therefore, basics about competencies, learning objectives and assessments are treated with a focus on traditional education. By applying these concepts on e-learning, existing problems for e-learning courses are discus...

BACKGROUND With massive investment in health-related research, above and beyond investments in the management and delivery of healthcare and public health services, there has been increasing focus on the impact of health research to explore and explain the consequences of these investments and inform strategic planning. Relevance is reflected by increased attention to the usability and impact o...

Marine reserves are implemented to achieve a variety of objectives, but are seldom rigorously evaluated to determine whether those objectives are met. In the rare cases when evaluations do take place, they typically focus on ecological indicators and ignore other relevant objectives such as socioeconomics and governance. And regardless of the objectives, the diversity of locations, monitoring p...

The U.S. National Assessment of the Potential Consequences of Climate Variability and Change was a federally coordinated nationwide effort that involved thousands of experts and stakeholders. To draw lessons from this effort, the 10 authors of this paper, half of whom were not involved in the Assessment, developed and administered an extensive survey, prepared a series of working papers, and co...

BACKGROUND While the number of international students has increased over the last decade, such students face diverse challenges due to language and cultural barriers. International medical students suffer from personal distress and a lack of support. Their performance is significantly lower than non-international peers in clinical examinations. We investigated whether international students ben...