1,720,978 research outputs found
Patterns of Pollution: A Legal Geography of America's Toxic History and the Road to Remediation at the Tar Creek Superfund Site
Get PDFToxic sites across the United States have been sacrificed for progress and prosperity somewhere else. Far and wide, the communities that inhabit sacrifice zones and experience slow violence–or harm that happens over long periods–have little influence on regulatory structures that determine the remediation of their homes and homelands. This research answers two questions: how do the legal and regulatory structures of remediation perpetuate injustice and how effective is community activism at influencing these systems? Using legal geography and environmental justice frameworks, this research broadly analyzes the history and governance of toxicity in the United States, as well as coupling these findings with analysis of a community archive at the Tar Creek Superfund site in northeastern Oklahoma using reflexive thematic analysis. I argue that the lack of focus, as well as the lack of enforced procedures, on environmental justice within legal and regulatory frameworks reproduces injustice without acknowledging what community perspectives of justice are. Additionally, I assert that community activism is the primary driver of justice at polluted sites and that community involvement in the remediation process is necessary to move toward justice
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Analyzing Heat Waves Experienced by Underrepresented Communities Living in Low-Income Neighborhoods of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma
Get PDFAccording to the United States (U.S.) National Weather Service, extreme heat was the most fatal weather phenomena in 2022. As climates change around the U.S. and, more specifically, across the Southern Great Plains, extreme heat events are projected to increase in intensity, duration, and frequency. Past research demonstrates that heat-related mortality has increased throughout the state of Oklahoma in recent years, and that heat-related deaths are disproportionately represented by Black people, senior citizens, males, and single individuals.
To examine the impacts of extreme heat in a low-income and racially diverse community in the northeastern quadrant of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, this qualitative research study employed focus groups to address two research questions: 1) how do extreme heat conditions influence the lives of people living in Oklahoma City neighborhoods identified by significant social vulnerability?, and 2) what are the best practices for mitigating heat stress that can be implemented in Oklahoma City without harming the natural and social landscape that already exists? The focus groups were composed of four separate groups of people: 1) seniors, 2) youth, 3) mixed-aged adults, and 4) community leaders. Each group was asked the same set of questions, and the resulting discussions were transcribed to form the research dataset. To analyze the collected data, a thematic analysis was performed using three coding stages (open, axial, and selective). Five themes emerged from the data analysis: 1) adaptation, 2) communication/awareness, 3) health, 4) infrastructure, and 5) resources.
In response to the first research question, participants discussed being burdened by the high cost of utility bills and disadvantaged by the lack of amenities, such as pools, splash pads, shade trees, and bus shelters. In response to the second research question, participants listed many ways they employed self-agency to stay cool, such as staying in cooled buildings, using fans, and preventing outdoor heat from penetrating inside their homes using shading equipment. Findings also showed that community members could benefit from local programs that offer financial assistance for cooling expenses and educational materials to inform the public of heat-health coping strategies and available resources
Biodiversity conservation versus wind power development in the state of Oklahoma: assessing opinion where green interest scollide
Get PDFWind energy development represents one pursuit in sustainable technology meant to reduce negative impacts on the environment. Wind energy, however, may not be environmentally benign, as these activities can conflict or compete with other green interests, such as wildlife conservation. This research examines the perceptions of environmentally conscious individuals at the intersection of wind energy development and biodiversity conservation interests. The first chapter presents an extended explanation of sustainability, wind energy development, and biodiversity conservation to assist in framing my research. Chapter two presents the research conducted, titled “The ‘green on green’ conflict in wind energy development: a case study of environmentally conscious individuals in Oklahoma”. We used an online survey and distributed via environmentally related groups as well as at environmental events in the state of Oklahoma. We found that while participants were aware of the shifting causes of mortality of bird populations, they were less aware of the implications of wind energy on bat populations. In addition, attitudes towards biodiversity conservation as well as wind energy development were statistically significant when looking at how attitudes informed the identification of some impacts. Participants were also willing to support wind energy development if it had no impacts on biodiversity conservation, regardless of the trade-off presented. Attitudes towards biodiversity conservation were statistically significant in predicting almost all of these trade-offs. Lastly, various demographic factors such as gender and political affiliation were statistically significant when analyzing trade-off responses, but less demographic variables were statistically significant when analyzed in the context of the presented attitude questions. In the third chapter, I present an extended discussion of the results of my paper as well as avenues for future research using this data set
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Our squirrels will have elephant ears : indigenous perspectives on climate change in the south central United States
Get PDFAs climate change impacts areas around the world Indigenous communities are being impacted disproportionately. In the US a number of tribes are in differing levels of response and adaptation. In the south central U.S. there has been little research done and this study attempts to fill that gap and looks at how Native Americans in the SC region are identifying climate change. Through a series of workshops that collaborated with the South-Central Climate Science Center (SC-CSC) and other agencies to facilitate discussions with Native participants on their perspectives of climate change and variability, a space was created for indigenous peoples to communicate their stories of place in their own words in relation to climate change. Participants identified not only climate change mechanics but also the impacts that come from these and also shared varying levels of adaptation and preparedness
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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