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Stacked energyscapes: Conceptualizing fossil fuel and renewable energy entanglements in low-carbon transitions
Get PDFEnergy transitions are often characterized as discrete progressions away from fossil fuels to renewable energy, typically in different geographic spaces, which result in “winning” and “losing” communities. Policies have been enacted to encourage renewable energy investment in “losing” fossil fuel extractive communities. Such conceptualizations do not sufficiently consider how fossil fuel extraction and renewable energy intersect with and shape each other in these spaces. We introduce the term “stacked energyscapes” to better characterize these interactions. Rather than replacing a fossil fuel-based energy system, we argue that renewable energy is “stacked” atop it, entangling their sociotechnical “energyscapes” together in ways that can both accelerate and slow the transition. We develop this conceptualization based on a review of 149 journal articles, policy papers, and news articles of energy transition case studies, primarily focused on the U.S. We identify and analyze five key domains where stacked energyscapes manifest: land, labor, infrastructure, finance, and policy and regulation. Conceptualizing energy transitions as stacked energyscapes can sharpen understandings of transitions in extractive communities so as to better enable just transitions and reduce the environmental footprint of the energy sector
The Interplay of Principals and Politics in the Context of Ohio’s EdChoice Scholarship Program
Get PDFThe role of a Catholic school leader is complex, dynamic, and changing, especially in states where parental choice legislation has been enacted. This study utilizes Bolman and Deal’s (2017) organizational framework to examine the political nature of the role of the Catholic school leader. Specifically, this study explores the ways the Catholic school leader navigates the politics of accessing and advocating for government funds. Drawing from interviews with eight Catholic school principals who have utilized the Ohio EdChoice voucher program, this study captures the experiences of these principals through the lens of the political frame. Findings reveal lessons learned on how principals deal with conflict management, assessing and engaging with sources of power, and what skills are needed for managing politics. Understanding how Catholic school principals engage with the EdChoice program and how they navigate the accompanying challenges also offers guidance for principal formation programs at institutions of higher education on how to better equip emerging leaders with the familiarity and confidence to navigate politics
Impact of For-Credit Mindfulness Course on Student Resilience, Engagement, and Mental Health
Get PDFThis paper highlights the impact of a university for-credit introductory mindfulness course. Research compiled from student reflections, surveys, and interviews revealed that it had a notable impact on personal growth and development, including the capacity to navigate challenges, manage difficult emotions, and build resilience. This enhanced student learning, decision making, engagement, and connection to themselves, others, and the world around them. Course pedagogy and curriculum are included here alongside a narrative account of student experiences in the course. These findings indicate a promising practice for schools to include well-being supports in the student experience
Fundamental 2-quandles of the M(1/2, 1/3, 1/3; k) Montesino Knots
Get PDFEvery oriented knot has an associated fundamental quandle. Except in two simple cases, these quandles have infinite order. For every integer n\u3e1, there is a quotient of the fundamental quandle called the n-quandle of the knot. In some cases, these n-quandles may be finite. In the case of the M(1/2,1/3,1/3; k) Montesino knot family, the 2-quandle is finite. In this paper, we investigate the structure of the 2-quandle and prove its size
The Divine Stakes of Human Freedom: Jonas in Dialogue with Schelling
Get PDFIn a recent article, Lore Hühn calls for a comprehensive study of the parallels between Schelling’s critique of the will, on the one hand, and the philosophies of nature and technology developed in the twentieth century by students of Heidegger such as Hannah Arendt, Günther Anders, and Hans Jonas, on the other. Hühn notes, in particular, that:
essential moments of Jonas’s ethics of responsibility, with its critique of classical metaphysics’ neglect of the body and nature, cannot be understood without the background of Schelling; this holds as well for Jonas’s speculative figure of the self-retraction of God and for his theory of responsibility for the totality of beings.
In this article, I intend to contribute a small piece to that larger study by bringing Jonas’s speculative theology into dialogue with Schelling’s theodicy as outlined in the latter’s 1809 Freedom Essay. While there have been other studies on the Jonas–Schelling connection, they have mainly centered on points of convergence in their philosophies of life and have largely neglected the Freedom Essay, which is the only text by Schelling that Jonas demonstrably knew well. There is, nevertheless, a connection between Jonas’s philosophical biology, his theory of human freedom, and his theology that warrants methodological comparison with Schelling but that I can at the outset only mention here. Whereas Schelling attempts to understand how God and the world must be constituted if human freedom, as the ability to do good and evil, is to be real, Jonas attempts to understand how God and the world must be constituted if the phenomenon of life, broadly speaking, is to be saved as purposive and as, to various degrees, free. My focus will be on the theological significance of the advent of human freedom in the cosmos
Dropping the Veil: How an Investigation into One Asylum Office Reveals Systemic Failures Within the U.S. Affirmative Asylum System
Get PDFThe eleven asylum offices scattered throughout the United States make life-or-death decisions every year in tens of thousands of asylum cases. Yet, little is known about the internal workings of U.S. asylum offices where the informal, non-adjudicative framework for deciding asylum claims takes place behind closed doors. Our three-year study into the Boston Asylum Office is the first ever comprehensive empirical study into the inner workings of an asylum office in the United States. This Article takes a deeper dive into our study’s various findings to highlight systemic failures that are likely pervasive throughout the U.S. affirmative asylum system. We argue that our findings are particularly salient given new federal policies that place even greater authority into the hands of frontline asylum officers. We conclude by making a number of recommendations that would help to address the due process concerns within the affirmative asylum adjudication system identified in our study
The PAGA Problem: Conflict Between California Employment Policy and Federal Arbitration Act Expansion
Get PDFIn June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court handed down its decision in Viking River Cruises v. Moriana. This controversial opinion sought to resolve ongoing tension between the Federal Arbitration Act (FAA) and California’s Private Attorneys General Act (PAGA) by overturning California precedent dating back to 2014. In keeping with its decades-long crusade to strengthen the FAA, the Supreme Court removed the primary procedural mechanism through which putative PAGA plaintiffs could avoid mandatory arbitration of their claims, instead requiring aggrieved employees to sever their “individual” PAGA claims from the claims of their “similarly aggrieved” coworkers. Those opposed to PAGA viewed this development as a much-needed reprieve from a seemingly relentless onslaught of litigation targeted against employers, while proponents of the statute criticized the opinion as undermining PAGA’s important public policy objectives. Ultimately, rather than providing clarity to the adjudication of PAGA claims subject to arbitration agreements, the time since the Viking River Cruises ruling has seen California courts wrestle with the circuitous and in some instances incorrectly cited language of the nation’s highest court.
Notably, Justice Sonia Sotomayor included a concurring opinion in Viking River Cruises, leaving the door open for California to further modify PAGA in the event the Supreme Court’s reasoning proved faulty. Emboldened by Justice Sotomayor’s concurrence, this Note seeks a permanent resolution to the ever-contentious story of PAGA by offering a potential mechanism through which California might modify enforcement of the statute and achieve the state’s public policy objectives while avoiding further FAA preemption
Increasing Parent Faith Engagement at a Parish School
Get PDFIncreasing faith engagement among Catholic school shareholders is a priority for school leaders. Catholic school communities can learn from this year-long project with a parish school. Sacred Heart Parish School serves approximately 300 K3-8th grade students. Like many parish schools, Sacred Heart sees a growing number of parents disengaged with the faith life of the parish and school, despite 98% of them being registered parishioners. The parent population enjoys robust and regular social activities, but report they are uncomfortable or uninterested in faith activities. The mission of Sacred Heart Parish School is to nurture “children’s growth in the Catholic faith,” so the fact that two-thirds of parents are disengaged with or hostile to the mission is problematic. Sacred Heart\u27s intervention project built on the natural social strengths of parents, catalyzing parent leaders to design a wide variety of faith activities designed to overcome their peers’ discomfort and lack of interest. The peer-led interventions increased not only attendance at faith activities, but also financial stewardship to the parish and attendance at weekend liturgies. Parents responded most enthusiastically to invitations targeted to grade-level Mass experiences, so parent leaders will focus efforts on enhancing “Class Mass” initiatives for families
Analysis of Bayesian Transfer Function Fitting Method - A Potential Tool for Estimating Interferometer Uncertainty
Get PDFThe Response Function of the LIGO Interferometer is central to reconstructing the strain produced by incoming gravitational waves. As a function of the interferometer\u27s response to external stimuli, the Response Function is both analytically modeled and experimentally measured using excitations from the photon calibrator system at discrete frequencies. The uncertainty in each data point is propagated to the residual between the model and measurements, with both the uncertainty and residual being interpolated over a broadband frequency range. This project explores an alternative method to estimating the uncertainty and systematic error present in the Response function model through the utilization of Bayesian Statistics as opposed to data interpolation. We fit a distribution of transfer functions directly to the residual of the Response Function, bypassing the inherent error in data interpolation. Using data gathered from an electronic whitening chassis at discrete frequency points as a substitute for Response Function data and varying the Signal-to-Noise Ratio as a proxy for varying the uncertainty in the measurements, we analyze the results of this method and compare its precision and accuracy as compared to the standard transfer-function-fitting method
An Alternate Proof for the Top-Heavy Conjecture on Partition Lattices Using Shellability
Get PDFA partially ordered set, or poset, is governed by an ordering that may or may not relate any pair of objects in the set. Both the bonds of a graph and the partitions of a set are partially ordered, and their poset structure can be depicted visually in a Hasse diagram. The partitions of {1, 2, ..., n} form a particularly important poset known as the partition lattice Πn. It is isomorphic to the bond lattice of the complete graph Kn, making it a special case of the family of bond lattices. Dowling and Wilson’s 1975 Top-Heavy Conjecture states that every bond lattice has at least as many elements in its upper half as in its lower half. The existing proof of this conjecture by Huh et al. in 2017 relies heavily on algebraic geometry. In this paper, we provide an alternate combinatorial proof for the Top-Heavy Conjecture on partition lattices. To do this, we define a specific class of forests on n vertices and construct an abstract simplicial complex ∆n out of the edge sets of these graphs. Then, we show that ∆n is a shellable complex for all n, and we use this result to prove that Πn is a top-heavy lattice