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Over time, accountability measurements in education have paralleled measurement systems that originated in the business sector. Reform efforts, such as the Baldrige criteria, have continued to demonstrate that the business paradigm has offered precious little in the way of classroom success, despite the publicity and funding these movements receive--a lesson that politicians and educators seem to have trouble learning, despite its influence in 20th-century education.

Coral reefs provide shoreline protection, biological diversity, fishery harvests, and tourism, all values that stem from the physically-complex coral infrastructure. Stony corals (scleractinians) construct and maintain the reef through deposition of calcium carbonate. Therefore, assessment of coral reefs requires at least some measurement endpoints that reflect the biological and physical condition of stony corals. Most monitoring programs portray coral quantity as live coral cover, which is the two-dimensional proportion of coral surface to sea floor viewed from above (planar view). The absence of the third dimension, however, limits our ability to characterize coral reef value, physiology, health and sustainability. A three-dimensional (3D) approach more realistically characterizes coral structure available as community habitat and, when combined with estimates of live coral tissue, quantifies the amount of living coral available for photosynthesis, growth and reproduction. A rapid coral survey procedure that coupled 3D coral quantification with more traditional survey measurements was developed and tested in the field. The survey procedure relied on only three underwater observations – species identification, colony size, and proportion of live tissue – made on each colony in the transect. These observations generated a variety of metrics, including several based on 3D colony surface area, that are relevant to reef management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Female mosquitofish exposed to pulp and paper mill effluent (PME) in the Fenholloway River, Florida, USA have masculinized secondary sex characteristics and altered aromatase enzyme activity. We and others have shown that the Fenholloway River PME contains androgenic and progestogenic substance(s). The present study was designed to test the hypothesis that the development and reproductive health of PME-exposed Fenholloway River mosquitofish are altered compared to mosquitofish living in Econfina River, which is the reference site. Fish were collected on a single day from both sites in June and August 1999 and January and June 2000. We compared standard length, anal fin length and segment number; body, liver, and gonad mass; and number of eggs and embryos from Fenholloway and Econfina River mosquitofish. The data were analyzed collectively for generalized site effect, for site effects during reproductive and nonreproductive seasons, and for repeatability of site effects between years. Mosquitofish exposed to PME in the Fenholloway River were generally smaller in length and mass, anal fin segment number was greater, and the number of embryos, but not oocytes, was significantly decreased compared to the reference site fish. Anal fin length and segment number and liver and testis masses were generally greater in Fenholloway compared to the Econfina River males. The importance of this study is that we have documented masculinized development and decreased embryo production in PME-exposed mosquitofish and that these site effects are generally consistent across seasons and between years.