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Six RACC high school teams from Vermont and Puerto Rico initiated a high school science and cultural exchange program during the spring of 2016. RACC high school teams met last summer at the 2015 Streams Project high school training week at Saint Michael's College, which is geared towards promoting scientific research focused on adaptation to climate change in both regions. The exchange started with a trip to Vermont in March for four teachers and ten students from Jose E Aponte de la Torre High School, Juan Ponce de Leon High School, Aurea E Quiles High School, and Academia Maria Reina. Then, students from Vermont schools Hartford High School and Bellows Free Adademy-Fairfax traveled to Puerto Rico during the April school break.

While in Vermont, students visited Hartford High School where they learned data collection methods to measure carbon in plants and to determine how soils absorb water and nutrient runoff with Curriculum Developer Didi Pershouse. Students were welcomed by the Spanish class where they shared typical cuisines from Vermont and Puerto Rico, while practicing speaking in Spanish. Students visited a nearby sugar shack as well as Dartmouth College to tour the campus and visit the life sciences building. Dartmouth graduate students spoke about their research on soil carbon cycling and evolutionary ecology.

Students then traveled to Bellows Free Academy-Fairfax to participate in homestays with local families. While in Fairfax, students attended a Spanish class, a social studies class, and learned how to construct Global Decomposition Bags for deployment in Puerto Rico. Students also visited the Proctor Maple Research Center and the Green Mountain Dairy Farm to tour a working dairy farm and biodigester.

A couple weeks later, Vermont students and teachers traveled to Puerto Rico during their spring break. Students visited the Children's Museum in Carolina and toured by boat the Pinones Lagoon and mangrove channels. Students experimented with a typical Puerto Rican lunch, followed by a tour of Old San Juan. They visited the afterschool program at Jose E Aponte de la Torre High School for chemistry, physics, research methods, and botany classes.

The trip to the El Verde Field Station, which is managed by the Luquillo Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Program, started with a talk by Dr. Jess Zimmerman and Sarah Stankavich. Students learned field protocols for soil characterization, vegetation dynamics research, and data entry. That afternoon, the teams kayaked at the bioluminescent bay in Las Croabas. Students visited nesting sea turtles at the Northeast Ecological Corridor (NEC), in Luquillo and learned Bomba y Plena dances before having free time to explore the beach.

Teams visited the LTER Schoolyard parcel in the Guanica Dry Forest Reserve which included a hike to Fort Capron Ruins and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Site and board walk. The final day in Puerto Rico included a tour of the Arecibo Observatory and the Juan Ponce de Leon High School in Florida. While at the school, students learned about vegetation protocols and parcel delineation before collecting data in the school forest.

Both students and teachers benefited from these cultural and scientific exchanges. A second exchange program will be planned for the subsequent school year, and will involve more high schools from Vermont and Puerto Rico.

Embrace change this spring
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Courtesy VERMONT Fish & Wildlife Moretown Elementary School first- and second-graders had an incredible opportunity to help Vermont Fish & Wildlife staff and volunteers stock the Winooski River in Waterbury with trophy brown and rainbow trout.

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Renewable energy siting bill passes despite end of session wrangling
vtdigger.org
Lawmakers passed a bill Friday that supporters say will give Vermont's towns and regions more control over where renewable-energy projects get sited. Legislators adopted the bill following last-minute sleights including what some of them described as a ...

BurlingtonFreePress.com
Vermont gutters clogged with leaves
BurlingtonFreePress.com
Q: We have rain gutters on our house that keep getting plugged with leaves and seeds from nearby trees, and then overflow, flooding my wife's flower beds. I started looking into screen guards for the gutters. In reading the customer reviews, many of ...

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Chamber of Commerce and Indusrty WA REPS Sundowner - Lendlease
Business News
Lendlease's Regional Director, Andrew Schroth will provide an update on the status of Lendlease's current projects, an insight into plans and opportunities in general and outline areas and opportunities for local industry engagement, now and into the ...

Golden Horseshoe students recognized in Charleston | Education ...  Charleston Gazette-Mail

vtdigger.org
Bill banishing criminal history from job applications becomes law
vtdigger.org
... housing trust partner to convert motel to housing · Breck Bowden: Seeking certainty about an uncertain future for Lake Champlain · Call for new dairy model in Vermont sparks debate · Vermont Gas gets go-ahead for pipeline construction through ...

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The Work And Wages Of Vermont's Women
Vermont Public Radio
These are a couple of the statistics uncovered in a recent series of reports published by "Change the Story VT," an initiative that has collected data to understand the economic well-being of women in Vermont. We speak with Cary Brown ... RE: Women in ...

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BBC staff concerned after external applicant appointed to Today role  The Guardian

Students: black cartoonist's criticism of Black Lives Matter is racist  Campus Reform

"I was trying to make a point, showing the hypocrisy behind the Black Lives Matter."

Louis Gossett Jr. says Hollywood films are too violent and bad for children  Washington Times

Louis Gossett Jr. is concerned about the level of violence in films and TV and the effect it can have on children. The 79-year-old Oscar-winning actor recently ...

Student Research, Creativity, Innovation on Display at Annual Conference
UVM News
About 300 augmented reality sandboxes have been created in the world, and UVM senior environmental studies major Rachel Seigel built one of them. Designed by UC Davis faculty member Oliver Kreylos, the tool uses a Microsoft Kinect, a data projector, ...

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New York Times
If Anyone Here Objects to This Union, Bark
New York Times
“I bet you 50 percent of the weddings I'm going to do this summer are going to have some dog involvement,” said Jeff Woodward, a photographer in Vermont. Including a pet in your wedding is a leap of faith, in addition to ... Emily Layden, 27, and Brian ...

Residents lose lawsuit seeking to stop CNY solar farm  Syracuse.com

HT2 and LINGOs Announce New Partnership
Personnel Today
Alan Betts, CLO at HT2, continued “We've been working with charities and other non-profit organisations [in addition to our corporate clients] for some time now, and we're delighted to be partnership with LINGOs on this fantastic project. We're also ...

Talk of the Town
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
The winners are all invited to be a part of the team representing Vermont in the annual American Region Mathematics League competition at Penn State University on June 3 and 4 and to attend the 2016 Governor's Institute in Mathematical Sciences to be ...

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New UVM study tests effects of alternative farming practices
WCAX
A field at Shelburne Farms has been the site of an ongoing state agricultural study on groundwater runoff. But that study has now been expanded thanks to a four-year USDA grant for half a million dollars. It's money for a new study by the University of ...

Bernie Sanders to Cut Hundreds of Staff Members and Focus on ...  The New York Times

ERISA Preemption after Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual Ins. Co | The National Law Review  The National Law Review

House backs prescription drug price transparency bill
vtdigger.org
... Quiros sues insurer for $2 million, and counting, in legal fees · Hayden Dublois & David Colander: A new millennial Republican agenda · Hospital, housing trust partner to convert motel to housing · Breck Bowden: Seeking certainty about an uncertain ...

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