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Property value impacts of onshore wind energy in New England: The importance of spatial heterogeneity and temporal dynamics
Get PDFThe purpose of this paper is to update and extend prior studies that examine the impact of onshore wind turbines on property values. Our data come from Massachusetts and Rhode Island, two states that are population dense and rapidly transitioning to renewable energy. We use a difference-in-differences identification strategy with treatment defined by proximity. In contrast to prior research in these states, our results suggest that property values decline when wind turbines are built. These negative impacts are mostly confined to properties within 1 km of a turbine. However, we delve deeper into these aggregate results by examining how treatment effects vary for different regions and how treatment effects vary over time. Importantly, we find that the negative impacts found are almost entirely driven by Cape Cod and Nantucket, Massachusetts. We estimate small and typically insignificant effects for other regions of Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Further, we estimate dynamic models that allow for heterogeneous treatment effects in time since construction. These results suggest that negative impacts abate over time, though in the case of Cape Cod and Nantucket never go to zero. Possible explanations for our complex findings include contagion from opposition to Cape Wind, preference-based sorting, and acclimatization
Female Perpetrators of Ritually Motivated Pedicide and Mutilation of Children
Get PDFRitually motivated pedicide is among contemporary Africa’s most severe crimes against children. Most of these crimes involve brutal acts of violence or mutilation of the victim. While men are most often the perpetrators of violent crimes, ritually motivated pedicide and mutilation equally attract women. The role of women in these crimes is not restricted to the less violent aspects of the crimes; instead, they also extend to the most brutal elements, often involving mutilation, decapitation or outright murder of the victim. This article explored the involvement of women in these crimes that target children for mutilation and pedicide. The article draws on case examples of incidents involving brutality and murder of children by women selected from academic reports and reports by media and non-governmental organisations to demonstrate the nature of involvement in these crimes. The article demonstrates that women also engage in the most serious roles with or without the company of men in ritually motivated pedicide and mutilation. These include mutilation and violent murder of children who are used for rituals. The author argues that the high degree of violence in ritually motivated mutilation and pedicide means that these crimes against children deviate from the established female patterns of aggression that are typically less violent
Effects of Transcranial Focal Electrical Stimulation Via Concentric Ring Electrodes on Seizure Activity
No full textEpilepsy affects approximately one percent of the planet’s population. There does not appear to be any single therapy that works for all types of epilepsies. As an alternative, we have been developing a noninvasive, or minimally invasive, transcranial focal electrical stimulation (TFS) based on the novel tripolar concentric ring electrode (TCRE). By applying biphasic, charge balanced, constant current, pulses noninvasively through the TCRE, we have realized acute seizure attenuation in rats. In different rat seizure models (penicillin, pilocarpine, pentylenetetrazol, 3-mercaptopropionic acid) and through hundreds of experiments, we have demonstrated that TFS successfully aborted seizures, and even status epilepticus, a severe form of seizure activity that is estimated to cause the death of 20,000 to 40,000 people each year in the US alone. Additionally, TFS selectively increased gamma-aminobutyric acid (GABA) and decreased glutamate extracellular levels concurrently. TFS also prevented naïve brains from epileptogenesis in the electrical amygdala kindling in cats, a larger animal model. TFS reduces the over-release of glutamate, brain damage, and Pgp overexpression and function induced by seizures. TFS augments the effects of phenytoin (PHT) in animals with PHT-resistant seizures. Further, TFS potentiated the effectiveness of diazepam. Lastly, TFS does not induce brain damage nor alter memory in rats or humans and does not cause sensation or pain, allowing truly double-blinded studies. In conclusion, we have found TFS to be effective at preventing, aborting, or attenuating acute seizures induced by penicillin, pilocarpine, pentylenetetrazol, and 3-mercaptopropionic acid and was safe. Lastly, TFS reverted the drug-resistant seizures (DRS) in rats, and we hope that it will have similar effects in humans. In the future, we need to test if TFS is tolerable, safe, and effective in humans with pharmacoresistant epilepsy
Probabilistic landslide tsunami modeling of the 2018 Palu Bay event
No full textOn September 28, 2018, a Mw 7.5 earthquake triggered near Central Sulawesi generated a highly destructive tsunami within Paul Bay (Indonesia). Field surveys and various studies conducted after the event showed that, as a result of the earthquake, several large submarine landslides were triggered along the shores of the bay, that significantly contributed to tsunami generation. The estimated geometry and other parameters for these slides, however, were affected by a large uncertainty. Here, we present a probabilistic tsunami hazard analysis of this event, based on Monte Carlo simulations using a linear Mild Slope Equation (MSE) model combined with a Green\u27s function approach, that allow efficiently simulating a large number of stochastic landslide tsunami generation and propagation scenarios within Palu Bay, for each of the identified landslides. In the MSE model, a space and time-dependent source term is used to represent the seafloor motion associated with each landslide scenario. In the Green\u27s function approach, a large database of elementary solutions and their tsunami elevation at a large number of coastal save points is pre-computed for tsunamis generated by a unit seafloor acceleration specified over a small area. Then, given an actual submarine landslide scenario, with a specific acceleration function, the tsunami elevation at the save points is simply and efficiently computed as a weighed linear superposition of the elementary solutions. Tsunami runup is finally obtained using a semi-empirical method, based on results computed at save points for each landslide scenario. The model is applied to the 2018 Palu Bay tsunami event, allowing to investigate how the uncertainty in landslide parameters affects tsunami hazard. A comparison with observed runups is made, which shows that these fall within the range of uncertainty of the simulated probabilistic runups
First-year Engineering Students’ Motivation to Participate in Virtual International Collaborative Experiential Program (VICEP): An Expectancy-Value-Cost Approach
Get PDFChanges in course delivery mechanisms necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic created an opportunity to develop a Virtual International Collaborative Experiential Program (VICEP) as an alternative to traditional, travel-based study abroad programs. This paper presents the results of an investigation of engineering students’ motivation, perceived challenges, and preferred geographic areas for the VICEP. A sample of 116 first-year engineering students at the University of Cincinnati responded to survey items regarding their perceptions of motivation to participate in the VICEP, including in terms of expectancy, value, and cost, along with open-ended questions. Both male and female students scored the highest on value and the lowest on cost but with different weights. However, gender differences in the expectancy, value, and cost were not statistically significant. Intercultural collaboration and learning opportunities were significantly more important for female students than for males, and the engaged learning environment of the program and career skills development were more important for male students than for females. Time commitment and the structure of the program as well as the stress endured during the study abroad were strongly negative factors, more so for male students. Interestingly, the virtual nature of the project and the existence (or not) of incentives were not encouraging to most students. Structuring the world into seven geographic regions, the most preferred regions for virtual collaboration have the common feature of being technologically developed, except China which was among the lowest-ranking countries/regions. Preferences for geographical regions between male and female students was significant only for some regions. The present research provides valuable information for faculty leading virtual intercultural collaborative experiences
Managing Diversity in a Culturally Fractional World: Review of Diversity: A Key Idea for Business and Society (2023) by Mustafa F. Özbilgin
Get PDFThe Outsized Role of Salps in Carbon Export in the Subarctic Northeast Pacific Ocean
No full textPeriodic blooms of salps (pelagic tunicates) can result in high export of organic matter, leading to an “outsized” role in the ocean\u27s biological carbon pump (BCP). However, due to their episodic and patchy nature, salp blooms often go undetected and are rarely included in measurements or models of the BCP. We quantified salp-mediated export processes in the northeast subarctic Pacific Ocean in summer of 2018 during a bloom of Salpa aspera. Salps migrated from 300 to 750 m during the day into the upper 100 m at night. Salp fecal pellet production comprised up to 82% of the particulate organic carbon (POC) produced as fecal pellets by the entire epipelagic zooplankton community. Rapid sinking velocities of salp pellets (400–1,200 m d−1) and low microbial respiration rates on pellets (\u3c1% of pellet C respired day−1) led to high salp pellet POC export from the euphotic zone-up to 48% of total sinking POC across the 100 m depth horizon. Salp active transport of carbon by diel vertical migration and carbon export from sinking salp carcasses was usually \u3c10% of the total sinking POC flux. Salp-mediated export markedly increased BCP efficiency, increasing by 1.5-fold the proportion of net primary production exported as POC across the base of the euphotic zone and by 2.6-fold the proportion of this POC flux persisting 100 m below the euphotic zone. Salps have unique and important effects on ocean biogeochemistry and, especially in low flux settings, can dramatically increase BCP efficiency and thus carbon sequestration
To Save Humankind Kill Off the Hero’s Journey
No full textIn Narratives of Human Evolution, Misia Landau revealed that late 19th and early 20th century fathers of human evolutionary theory, including Charles Darwin, unconsciously conformed their stories to the key structural elements of Russian folktales, as identified by Vladimir Propp. Dunsworth argues that the habit—within science, academia, and throughout popular culture—of projecting a hero’s journey onto lineages that blend and weave across deep time is fundamental to the perpetuation of sexist, patriarchal, and racist (all untrue) reconstructions of human origins and human nature, which we continue to enact to our peril and to the planet’s. In this presentation, Dunsworth will break down the hero’s journey into its parts and compare them to the facts we can glean from the rocks and the old bones. In the end, the hero’s journey does not triumph.
This presentation is based on a chapter in Dunsworth’s book that she is writing under contract for Viking/Penguin (2025)
