Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Democratic Civic Engagement: Transformative Local, Inclusive Decision-Making To Achieve Global Peace And Climate Solutions, Leah Ceperley

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

The UN Sustainable Development Goals call for action on Climate (No. 13) and Strengthening Governance (No. 16) as imperative to transform our world toward one that is resilient, just, and peaceful. Climate change is a global problem, marked frequently in the U.S. by indifference, with far-reaching impacts disproportionately burdening the poor and vulnerable worldwide. Global in scope, its sources, impacts, and fields of action are local. Combating indifference at the local level can strengthen local governance structures, build trust across ideological divides, and shift the conversation from indifference to action.

Using an example from a University of Dayton-sponsored National Issues …

Encounters With Climate Change: How Sdg 13 Can Move From Awareness To Action, Rebecca C. Potter

Biennial Conference: The Social Practice of Human Rights

In a well-known passage from his book I and Thou, Martin Buber relates his encounter with a tree: “I contemplate a tree,” he writes, and then lists the various ways he could perceive the tree, as an artist or biologist, as someone interested in the trees parts and construction or interested in its function as a living system. But in all cases, Buber observes, “the tree remains my object and has its place and its time span, its kind and condition.”

Yet sometimes, “if will and grace are conjoined,” Buber describes being drawn into a relation with the tree wherein …

Effects Of Global Warming On Work-Rest Routines For Crop Workers In Appalachia, Ken Silver, Ying Li, Emmanuel Odame, Yuqiang Zhang

ETSU Faculty Works

Background: Workers in outdoor occupations are expected to be at high risk of increased morbidity and mortality, and diminished productivity, as a result of global warming in the 21st century. A previous modelling study of geographic variations in heat-related mortality risk in projected U.S. populations mid-century showed the states of Tennessee, Kentucky and North Carolina to be highly vulnerable. Methods: Under both the RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 emissions scenarios of IPCC AR5, we evaluate the effect of future warming on estimated Wet Bulb Globe Thermometer (WBGT) temperatures using model-simulated future climate variables that were dynamically downscaled by a regional meteorology model …

Assessing The Periodic Groundwater Flow Conditions Of A Perched Aquifer System In The Daniel Boone National Forest, Ethan Sweet

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Assessing the Periodic Groundwater Flow Conditions of a Perched Aquifer System in the Daniel Boone National Forest

Ethan Sweet and Jonathan Malzone

Eastern Kentucky University, Department of Geosciences

Natural ephemeral wetlands situated among the ridge-tops in the Daniel Boone National Forest serve as reservoirs that recharge a shallow groundwater system. Unique interactions between surface and groundwater in these isolated systems provide substantial support for the native ecosystem, serving as a breeding ground for amphibians and as source water for vegetation—especially in periods of drought. Currently it is not understood how groundwater could provide regional biodiversity, a drought buffer, or a …

The Ability Of The U.S. Army Heat Strain Decision Aid (Hsda) To Predict A Limiting Heat Stress Exposure, Katelynn E. Glisson

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Working below the threshold limit value (TLV) for heat stress is not always feasible. When work above the TLV is required, an exposure method is needed that can help protect workers from time limiting heat stress by calculating a safe time for work at certain heat exposures. The purpose of this paper is to determine whether the USARIEM Heat Strain Decision Aid (HSDA) can be used to predict time limiting heat stress exposure in an occupational setting.

Twelve adults participated in time limited heat stress exposures. A range of heat stress conditions were designed using three different ensembles and five …

Predicting Hand Surface Area From A Two-Dimensional Hand Tracing, Myles O'Mara

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Recent occupational health studies have focused on dermal exposure at the hands, but have been unable to accurately express dose without knowing the HSA. There is no standard method to calculate HSA, though some researchers have derived HSA formulas based on dimensions from a Taiwanese population. This research paper describes a shortcut method to estimate the hand surface area (HSA) of a human hand from a two-dimensional hand tracing, and repeated a Taiwanese HSA study in order to explore the viability of its HSA formula in an American university population. A sample of nine adult men and nine adult women, …

Investigating The Toxicity And Accumulation Of 2,4-Dichlorophenoxyacetic Acid (2,4-D) And Glyphosate In Eisenia Fetida, Caitlin Lazurick, Nicole Lidzbarski, Rachel Owings, Jeff Brotherton, Edna Steele

Journal of the South Carolina Academy of Science

Glyphosate, the main ingredient in Roundup^®, is the most widely used herbicide in the world. It is also used in combination with another effective herbicide, 2,4-D, in the formulation called Enlist Duo^®. The EPA approved the use of Enlist Duo^® on certain crops including those genetically modified to be resistant to both herbicides. The predicted significant increase in the use of these herbicides raised concerns from the general public because both compounds have been classified as possibly or probably carcinogenic. Since herbicides are applied directly to vegetation, the safety of organisms that come in contact …

Mediation Of Eutrophication Of Surface And Subsurface Water From Non-Point Sources: Nutrient Monitoring At Meadowbrook Farm (Madison County, Kentucky), Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Non-point sources from various human activities such as farming have replaced industrial point sources as contributors of many contaminants in surface and subsurface waters of the United States. Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm (720 acres, ~2.9 km²; Madison County, Kentucky) is a teaching facility dedicated to improving farming techniques and discovering best practices for farm operations that include minimizing environmental impacts. Agricultural activities on the Farm contribute nutrients to the Muddy Creek (Kentucky River) watershed that promote eutrophication and degrade water quality. Farm management already uses protocols to mediate drainage of dissolved nitrogen off the Farm, but also …

Nutrient Contamination From Non-Point Sources: Dissolved Nitrate And Ammonium In Surface And Subsurface Waters At Eku Meadowbrook Farm, Madison County, Kentucky, Reid E. Buskirk, Hunter R. Evans, Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Agricultural activities often contaminate watersheds with excess nutrients leading to poor water quality and eutrophication. We assayed dissolved nutrient levels in surface and subsurface waters of Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm in order to assess levels of dissolved nutrients leaving its farmland and draining into the Muddy Creek watershed. The Farm raises both crops and livestock so that nutrient sources include fertilizer and manure. We sampled springs, runoff, and subsurface pipe drainage as well as Muddy Creek on six days from May to August 2016 under a variety of weather conditions. Using established, standard colorimetric methods, we measured nitrate (NO …

Patterns Of Nutrient Export For A Typical Non-Point Source, Meadowbrook Farm, Madison County, Kentucky, James Scott Winter, Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Excess nutrients are found in watersheds originating from active farmland often causing poor water quality and eutrophication in natural waters. Use of fertilizer and animal husbandry can contaminate both surface water and groundwater. Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm raises crops and livestock and is typical of farms that contribute excess nutrient contaminants to watersheds as non-point sources. An instrumented weir is positioned within a key sub-watershed of the Farm that empties into Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River. This drainage is the largest outlet from the Farm that is representative of the Farm’s collective activities.

We measured flow …

Nutrient Contamination From Non-Point Sources: Dissolved Phosphate In Surface And Subsurface Waters At Eku Meadowbrook Farm, Madison County, Kentucky, Hunter R. Evans, Reid E. Buskirk, Walter S. Borowski, Jonathan M. Malzone

EKU Faculty and Staff Scholarship

Farms are non-point sources for nutrient contaminants that drain into watersheds and contribute to eutrophication and other environmental problems. Eastern Kentucky University’s Meadowbrook Farm raises both crops and livestock, causing dissolved phosphorus in the form of orthophosphate (PO₄^3-) from fertilizer and animal manure to enter surface and subsurface waters, eventually flowing into Muddy Creek, a tributary of the Kentucky River.

We sampled surface water, springs, and water from French drains that emanate from the farm, and also sampled Muddy Creek waters from May through August 2016. Typically, 1 to 2 days after sampling, we colorimetrically measured dissolved …

Comparing Urban And Rural Vulnerability To Heat-Related Mortality: A Systematic Review And Meta-Analysis, Ying Li, Emmanuel A. Odamne, Ken Silver, Shimin Zheng

ETSU Faculty Works

Studies of the adverse impacts of high temperature on human health have primarily focused on urban areas, due in part to urban centers generally having higher population density and often being warmer than surrounding rural areas (the “urban heat island” effect). As a result, urban areas are often considered to be more vulnerable to summer heat. However, heat vulnerability may not only be determined by heat exposure, but also by other population characteristics such as age, education, income, baseline health status, and social isolation. These factors are likely to increase vulnerability among rural populations compared to urban populations. In this …

A Stochastic Epidemiological Model Of The Response Of American Chestnut Populations To Fungal Blight, Kelsey Lieberman, Rebecca Rouleau, Anita Davelos Baines, Martin Allen

Annual Symposium on Biomathematics and Ecology Education and Research

No abstract provided.

Factors Associated With Bat Mortality At Wind Energy Facilities In The United States, Maureen Thompson, Julie A. Beston, Matthew Etterson, Jay E. Diffendorfer, Scott R. Loss

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Hundreds of thousands of bats are killed annually by colliding with wind turbines in the U.S., yet little is known about factors causing variation in mortality across wind energy facilities. We conducted a quantitative synthesis of bat collision mortality with wind turbines by reviewing 218 North American studies representing 100 wind energy facilities. This data set, the largest compiled for bats to date, provides further evidence that collision mortality is greatest for migratory tree-roosting species (Hoary Bat [Lasiurus cinereus], Eastern Red Bat [Lasiurus borealis], Silver-haired Bat [Lasionycteris noctivagans]) and from July to October. Based …

Human Energy Capstone

Activities

Movement is very important for humans. From our earliest days, we seem eager to get up and move around. The most celebrated moments of a child’s life seem to be geared around the ability to move: the first crawl, the first walk, the first bike ride, and (every parent’s nightmare) the first driver’s license. The ability to get around is one of the most cherished abilities and freedoms. For many Americans, our ability to get around when and how we want is almost considered a sacred right. Physics textbooks, which have many chapters devoted to motion, build a great many …

Efficiency

Activities

The previous two activities in this module have shown us the importance of conservation laws. These laws provide extra “tools” that allow us to analyze certain aspects of physical systems and to be able to predict the motion of objects in the systems without using more complicated analysis. Even in situations wherein we cannot exactly solve the motion, these laws are incredibly useful. For instance, if someone shows us an incredibly complicated device that can seemingly produce electricity with no energy input whatsoever, we know not to invest money in this device, as it must be a sham since it …

First Law Of Thermodynamics

Activities

In last week’s activity, we calculated the motion of objects by studying the forces on them. Using Newton’s Second Law of Motion, we were able to relate the forces on an object to the acceleration it experienced. The presence of constant forces led to constant accelerations, which corresponded to linearly-increasing velocities with respect to time. Comparisons made between the velocities we measured and those calculated from a study of the forces on the objects allowed us to validate Newton’s equation F = ma. In this week’s activity, we are going to investigate almost the same experimental setup as last week, …

Newton's Second Law

Activities

There are two ways to study the dynamics of a system in which there is motion. One of these is to study the kinematics of the system to see if there is any acceleration. If there is an acceleration, then this implies that there is a net force on some part of the system. If there is no acceleration, then this means that either there are no forces on the system, or that the forces within the system are all balanced. The other way to study the system is from an energy standpoint. Energy can flow from potential to kinetic, …

Population Growth

Activities

When George Washington started the first Presidency of the United States of America, he was governing less than 4 million people who occupied an area of 2,300,000 square kilometers. It was an agrarian society, with 95% of the population living on farms and only 5% in cities or towns of more than 2,500. There was plenty of land, and a vast array of natural resources, just waiting to be tapped. Today, we live in a country of over 294 million people. While we are one of the major food producers in the world, it is no longer due to us …

Age Structures

Activities

One of the tools that demographers use to understand population is the age structure diagram (it is sometimes called a population pyramid, but it is not always pyramidal in shape). This diagram shows the distribution by ages of females and males within a certain population in graphic form. Figure 1 shows a diagram in which the ages and sexes for the United States population are arranged so that ages are grouped together such as 0 – 4 years, 5 – 9 years, and so on. The population of each is group is represented as a bar extending from a central …

Population Statistics

Activities

For all of its futuristic stylings, the television show Star Trek was, like most science fiction, a commentary on the state of society at the time it was written (late 1960’s). One of the more famous episodes of that series was the one entitled The Mark of Gideon, which dealt with a planet that was so overpopulated that people did not have anywhere to sit down. At the time of the show, the Earth’s population was at about 3.5 billion, and was increasing at an incredible rate. The effects of such a large population on the environment were beginning to …

Toxic Chemicals

Activities

Humans have used chemicals for a long time. The ancient Egyptians used chemicals for dyeing, soldering and coloring metal, and making jewelry. The Industrial Revolution, which began in the middle of the 18th century, spawned the development of many new chemicals and chemical processes. Since World War II, the global chemical industry has boomed. Global production of chemicals was 1 million tons in 1930 and is now over 400 million tons. Environmental scientists study chemicals to determine if they are harmful to human health and the environment. Pretty much every chemical can harm you if you ingest too much of …

Home Chemicals

Activities

Chemicals are everywhere, in the air you breathe, in the food you eat, and in the chair you’re sitting on. Moreover, you’re mostly chemicals. Ninety nine percent of the human body is composed of just 6 chemical elements: oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, and phosphorus. After you die, you’ll decompose into hydrogen, nitrogen, water, ammonia, carbon dioxide, phosphoric acid, and sulfuric acid. So, from chemicals we come and to chemicals we go. Chemical elements are substances that contain one kind of atom and cannot be separated into simpler substances. There are 116 known chemical elements, of which 91 occur naturally. …

Mineral Identification

Activities

For this activity, we are going to try to identify ten different minerals from their properties. There is an attached listing of the major properties of the most commonly found minerals. Use it and any other resources you might have to identify the ten minerals, and list your findings on the sheet below. In order to help you by giving you a little practice with mineral identification, we suggest the following virtual identifier: http://facweb.bhc.edu/academics/science/harwoodr/Geol101/Labs/Minerals/ Your instructor will provide you with up to 10 different mineral samples for identification. To test for hardness, you will also be provided with a copper …

Plate Mechanics

Activities

Imagine a swimming pool that is totally covered with air rafts, with the air rafts neatly lined up end to end and side by side. Then imagine someone running up and doing a cannonball jump into the pool. Logically, the rafts will be thrust about with some of them jamming into each other, others pulling apart, and still others sliding past one another—and so it is with the tectonic plates of Earth: some of the plates are colliding, others are pulling apart, and still others are sliding past one another; therefore, understandably, where there are boundaries between the tectonic plates, …

Plate Speed

Activities

We are truly in motion no matter where we stand on the planet. The tectonic plates that compose the crust of the Earth are in motion at a measurable rate. Everything on the crust of the Earth changes its location in relation to the planet. Yes, the plates are moving over the mantle, and we can measure this motion to determine the rate of plate movement by figuring the distances and times involved. For example, if we know the past location of a certain island, then we can measure the distance between the present location of the island and its …

Earthquake Epicenter

Activities

In this week’s activity, we are going to try to locate the epicenter of an earthquake using readings from three different seismograph stations. This will be done by measuring the difference in time between the arrival of the P and S-waves. The difference it time of their arrivals is due to the difference in speeds for both waves. In particular, the difference in time is given by (distance to epicenter)/(Vp – Vs). Thus, we can find out how far away a particular seismograph is from an earthquake by solving this equation for distance. Since there are three stations, we can …

Climate Change

Activities

Global warming is a huge issue, not just because of the potential impact of the warming on the earth’s ecosystems, but also because the principal activity responsible for the bulk of emissions, fossil fuel combustion, literally fuels the engines of industrialized, urbanized societies. The stakes are huge -- international, political, financial, and environmental. In this exercise, you’ll learn about how to assess information sources, a critical skill in forming your own opinions and actions.

Ozone Depletion

Activities

While we often talk about the “Ozone Hole” over the Antarctic, we rarely talk about what ozone levels are like above our own heads. While the thinning of the ozone layer over the South Pole points to potential problems that we might experience here one day, it would be nice to know what our current situation is. In this week’s activity, we will do just this with the aid of data from 4 different satellites that have been monitoring ozone levels around the world for the last several decades. The Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer (TOMS) Program was started in 1978 …

Acid Rain

Activities

Acidity is measured on the pH scale ranges from 0 to 14 with 0 being acid, 7 as neutral, and 14 as alkaline. The pH scale measures the concentration of hydrogen ions in solution, which indicates acidity. The pH scale is also logarithmic, so that a change in one unit represents a tenfold change in acidity, thus a solution of pH 4 is 10 times as acidic as one with pH 5 and 100 times as acidic as pH 6. "Natural" or unpolluted rainfall is slightly acidic and has a pH of between 5.6 and 5.8. When fossil fuels, such …