Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Regenerative Agriculture Framework For Island Ecosystems Using São Miguel As A Case Study, Mya Hunter

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Context: Regenerative agriculture is a farming approach that uses soil health as the entry point to contribute to multiple objectives, such as improved nutrient cycling and climate regulation. Farmers can apply different practices to reach these objectives. The objectives and practices, however, are not equally relevant or applicable for farming systems on island ecosystems and the local context.

Objectives: The main objective of this paper, therefore, is to find out how solutions towards regenerative agriculture can be identified and evaluated as such that they result in meaningful advice for farmers on island ecosystems in order to mitigate the …

Sustainability And Connection To Place: Land Stewardship Through Local Icelandic Women-Run Businesses, Hazel Deharpporte

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Iceland is one of the leading countries in gender equality, but women are still underrepresented in the field of entrepreneurship. Women have unique approaches to land stewardship, and there is evidence that they are more likely than men to act sustainably. The purpose of this study is to explore the correlation between sustainability and connection to place in women-run, local businesses. I interviewed six women who run a wide range of businesses in the towns of Ísafjörður and Djúpivogur. From these interviews, I found that while the women did not necessarily think that running a business was more difficult as …

Aman Iman: Resilient Customs, Community Water Management, And Dry Futures In Anounizme, Morocco, Haley Kirtland

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This project explores how Anounizme, a village in southeastern Morocco, interacts with water. I was particularly curious about how traditional community management systems operate in the context of drought. I argue that the customary management system exhibits resiliency like it has in the face of Arabization, colonization, exploitative industry, and land privatization. It is capable of adapting to drought because it is more than a management system; it is a part of culture engrained as custom. Customs have porous boundaries, allowing a space for old aspects of culture to interact with both emerging aspects of culture and external pressures. I …

The Role Of Frugivorous Birds As Seed Dispersers: Feeding Selection And Preference Of Madagascar’S Avian Frugivores In Analamazaotra Forest, Thaddeus Bashaw

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Madagascar is a country rich in floral and faunal diversity. However, anthropogenic habitat destruction and climate change increasingly threaten its biodiversity. Endozoochorous plants that dependent on frugivory for seed dispersal are under threat due to increasing rates of localized extinctions of frugivorous lemurs, the primary seed dispersers of the island. While lemurs are the islands most abundant frugivores, other frugivorous vertebrates like birds and bats likely play a significant role in seed dispersal, although this role is still poorly understood. This study, conducted in Analamazaotra forest, compares the rates of visitation and consumption of six endemic fruiting tree species by …

Treatments Of Cyanobacteria On Mariculture Sponges In Jambiani, Tanzania, Sally Thornton-White

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Since 2009, Marine Cultures, an NGO, has explored sponge farming in Jambiani to develop secure and sustainable livelihoods for the community. While sponge farming provides economic opportunity for an industry that functions within ecological boundaries, it faces unique issues that threaten its success. As climate change increases global water temperatures, cyanobacteria are causing increased death rates among mariculture sponges. Mitigating these negative effects with sustainable and reliable solutions can help Marine Cultures grow their positive impact. Alternative methods for mitigating cyanobacteria growth were tested during three study phases. Phase 1 tested how sponge health and algae growth responds to being …

¿Cuál Es El Futuro Del Sistema Alimentario En Argentina? El Rol De Los Talleres De Alimentación Sana, Segura Y Soberana Del Área De Alimentación De La Utt En La Lucha Por La Agroecología Y La Soberanía Alimentaria, Gabriela Nahm

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

En 2022, con el contexto de la pandemia COVID-19, la crisis climática, la guerra Russo-Ucraniana y la crisis económica, el mundo ha visto los mayores precios de los alimentos en la historia, desproporcionadamente afectando los países y las poblaciones más vulnerables. En los dos lados de la malnutrición, ambos niveles de hambre y de obesidad están aumentando. Es decir que el mundo está en una crisis alimentaria. Si esta crisis existe por el mundo, Argentina y su sistema alimentario hegemónico, controlado por las empresas multinacionales, no puede ser excluido; de hecho, este sistema es uno que produce hambre y que …

El Parque De La Papa Y El Centro Internacional De La Papa: Un Caso De Estudio De Una Colaboración Única Para La Conservación De Diversidad Biocultural, Molly Orr

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

El Parque de la Papa, un territorio biocultural indígena en Cusco, Perú, es un sitio de conservación in situ de variedades de papas nativas apoyado por la ONG Asociación ANDES. En 2004, entró en un convenio con el Centro Internacional de la Papa (CIP) para la repatriación, restauración y seguimiento de las papas bajo el cual 410 variedades de papa fueron devueltas al Parque. El convenio ha formado la base para una relación continua entre CIP y el Parque; han desarrollado capacitaciones, investigaciones participativas e intercambios de conocimientos científicos y tradicionales. La colaboración entre CIP y el Parque es un …

Tsaachin Reindeer Herders: Perceptions Vs Reality, Sharla Dart

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

Mongolia is a country commonly known for its vast steppes and rich culture of nomadic pastoralism. Images of livestock grazing on the open steppe often come to mind when people think about the country. However, what about the lesser-known reindeer herders? The Tsaachin reindeer herders of Mongolia are an ethnic group in the northernmost region of the country that have been subject to common misconceptions stemming from perceptions created by people consuming exaggerated and false narratives. This study aims to discover if perceptions that outsiders have influence the reindeer herders of the West Taiga.

Monuments As A Lens To Understand Climate Change: A Survey Of Altered Indian Architecture, Mckenzie Davis

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

My project is asking in what ways climate change is impacting monuments in the developing world using case studies in India? The project will be a survey of sites occupying different positions in environment, religion, and history in order to assess the multitude of threats on cultural heritage created and/or exacerbated by climate change. The Taj Mahal (17th century) will be assessed in order to discuss the impacts of air pollution associated with an urban environ ment and drought along the Yamuna river, using a widely known icon of India to serve as a visualization of slow violence taking place …

Laguncularia Racemosa Top-Layer Sediment Microorganism Makeup In Relation To Differing Levels Of Perceived Anthropogenic Impact In Bocas Del Drago, Bocas Del Toro, Panama, Gabrielle Glendening

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As mangrove forests are destroyed by human factors across the earth, many crucial ecological processes that take place in these systems of trees are obstructed. One of the most important roles played by mangroves is their ability to sequester carbon in the sediment, as this storage of carbon helps diminish atmospheric warming. Many sediment microorganisms help in this process of carbon sequestration and play various other vital roles in mangrove ecosystems. Microorganisms in marine sediments can be used to assess the health of the surrounding environment. Past research has found significant differences in sediment microorganism composition, abundance, and diversity in …

Looking Through Their Lenses: An Analysis Of Virginia Environmental Nonprofits' Roles And Challenges In Shoreline Management For Coastal Resilience, Taiwo C. Olanrewaju Lasisi

School of Public Service Theses & Dissertations

Environmental nonprofit organizations have emerged to attend to the environmental needs of individuals and communities. Some of these needs are usually those that have been neglected, given insufficient attention, or cannot be singularly handled by the government. In advocating for coastal resilience, environmental nonprofits have been identified as actors who address coastal issues like sea-level rise, flooding, and shoreline management.

Shoreline management involves building setbacks and formulating short and long-term defense strategies such as building living shorelines, ripraps, bulkheads, and tree plantings. These strategies formed the basis of coastal defense in coastal zones. Shoreline management is a significant area of …

Lawbreaker: An Approach For Specifying Traffic Laws And Fuzzing Autonomous Vehicles, Yang Sun, Christopher M. Poskitt, Jun Sun, Yuqi Chen, Zijiang Yang

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Autonomous driving systems (ADSs) must be tested thoroughly before they can be deployed in autonomous vehicles. High-fidelity simulators allow them to be tested against diverse scenarios, including those that are difficult to recreate in real-world testing grounds. While previous approaches have shown that test cases can be generated automatically, they tend to focus on weak oracles (e.g. reaching the destination without collisions) without assessing whether the journey itself was undertaken safely and satisfied the law. In this work, we propose LawBreaker, an automated framework for testing ADSs against real-world traffic laws, which is designed to be compatible with different scenario …

Two Singapore Public Healthcare Ai Applications For National Screening Programs And Other Examples, Andy Wee An Ta, Han Leong Goh, Christine Ang, Lian Yeow Koh, Ken Poon, Steven M. Miller

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

This article explains how two AI systems have been incorporated into the everyday operations of two Singapore public healthcare nation-wide screening programs. The first example is embedded within the setting of a national level population health screening program for diabetes related eye diseases, targeting the rapidly increasing number of adults in the country with diabetes. In the second example, the AI assisted screening is done shortly after a person is admitted to one of the public hospitals to identify which inpatients—especially which elderly patients with complex conditions—have a high risk of being readmitted as an inpatient multiple times in the …

Odu’S Storm Recovery Project Gets Boost From Dominion Energy, News @ Odu

News Items

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Return Relationships In The Market For Cryptocurrency: A Var Approach, Julian Gouffray

James Madison Undergraduate Research Journal (JMURJ)

This paper examines how the Bitcoin-altcoin return relationship has evolved in periods between 2015 and 2020. To understand this relation, we observe data on the cryptocurrency Bitcoin and prominent altcoins Ethereum, Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar, and Monero, which collectively represent over 90% of the market throughout the observed period. We employ a vector autoregressive model (VAR) to produce forecast error variance decompositions, orthogonal impulse response functions, and Granger-causality tests. We find evidence that Bitcoin return variation has increasingly explained altcoin returns and that market inefficiency increased between 2017 and 2020, as shown by increased Granger causality between Bitcoin and altcoins. These …

Examining Bias In Jury Selection For Criminal Trials In Dallas County, Megan Ball, Brandon Birmingham, Matt Farrow, Katherine Mitchell, Bivin Sadler, Lynne Stokes

SMU Data Science Review

One of the hallmarks of the American judicial system is the concept of trial by jury, and for said trial to consist of an impartial jury of your peers. Several landmark legal cases in the history of the United States have challenged this notion of equal representation by jury—most notably Batson v. Kentucky, 476 U.S. 79 (1986). Most of the previous research, focus, and legal precedence has centered around peremptory challenges and attempting to prove if bias was suspected in excluding certain jurors from serving. Few studies, however, focus on examining challenges for cause based on self-reported biases from the …

Application Of Probabilistic Ranking Systems On Women’S Junior Division Beach Volleyball, Cameron Stewart, Michael Mazel, Bivin Sadler

SMU Data Science Review

Women’s beach volleyball is one of the fastest growing collegiate sports today. The increase in popularity has come with an increase in valuable scholarship opportunities across the country. With thousands of athletes to sort through, college scouts depend on websites that aggregate tournament results and rank players nationally. This project partnered with the company Volleyball Life, who is the current market leader in the ranking space of junior beach volleyball players. Utilizing the tournament information provided by Volleyball Life, this study explored replacements to the current ranking systems, which are designed to aggregate player points from recent tournament placements. Three …

Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook

Sustain Magazine

As the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic quickly spread from country to country and continent to continent in 2020, governments and scientists needed a way to track COVID-19 through populations in order to position public health interventions in the most impactful locations. Having a decision-based risk framework may help to guide policy creation that could minimize or prevent possible outbreaks and surges of infection within communities. The University of Louisville in partnership with Louisville’s Department of Public Health and Wellness tested this strategy in 2021 and 2022. This Wastewater-Informed Public Health Intervention Playbook describes the decisions and actions of that academic and public …

Theoretical Thinking Of Artificial Ecosystem For Modern Marine Ranching, Dewen Ding, Anning Suo

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Based on the systematic review of the conceptual evolution process of marine ranching and its development of practice, this paper pointed out the problems existing in the construction of marine ranching in China, such as lack of theoretical support, lack of ecological engineering technologies, and lack of ecological management. It then proposed the concept of marine ranching artificial ecosystem. In addition, the paper analyzed the structural principle of marine ranching artificial ecosystem from the viewpoint of cultivating key functional communities and habitat construction for the marine ranch fishery resources. Finally, the paper discussed the theoretical framework of the modern marine …

Global Technology Of Ocean Carbon Sequestration Based On Patent Analysis, Tianyue Peng, Dehao Tang, Liqiang Liu, Bing Han, Benduo Zhu

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

The ocean is the largest and most active carbon reservoir in the world. Through ocean-atmosphere exchange and the photosynthesis of marine plants, the uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2) by the ocean is much greater than that by soil and vegetation on terrestrial areas. This is essential to mitigate and ameliorate today's global warming which is caused by rising atmospheric CO2 concentration. Therefore, to achieve the goal of "carbon neutrality" around the country, it is an effective approach to sequester CO2 in the ocean. This paper summarizes the technical application scope and methods of ocean carbon sequestration. By analyzing correlative patents …

International Strategy Of Man And The Biosphere Programme Of Germany And Its Implications To China, Yijie Xian, Yan Zhuang, Qunli Han, Ding Wang

Bulletin of Chinese Academy of Sciences (Chinese Version)

Since mid-1990s, Germany has developed the UNESCO's Man and the Biosphere Programme (MAB) together with its biosphere reserves into a pathway of enhancing the nation's role in global governance. Measures took by Germany include:clarifying the national position in the globalization of German MAB, including putting more emphasis on partnership development, highlighting the effectiveness of development assistance, and ensuring the clearance and feasibility of action plan; collecting resources from foreign affairs, finance, intellectual, technology, etc., by multi-federal sector collaborative mechanism, to support the development of biosphere reserves of other countries; thinking globally and taking priority over Africa region. The example indicated …

“Be A Pattern For The World”: The Development Of A Dark Patterns Detection Tool To Prevent Online User Loss, Jordan Donnelly, Alan Dowley, Yunpeng Liu, Yufei Su, Quanwei Sun, Lan Zeng, Andrea Curley, Damian Gordon, Paul Kelly, Dympna O'Sullivan, Anna Becevel

Articles

Dark Patterns are designed to trick users into sharing more information or spending more money than they had intended to do, by configuring online interactions to confuse or add pressure to the users. They are highly varied in their form, and are therefore difficult to classify and detect. Therefore, this research is designed to develop a framework for the automated detection of potential instances of web-based dark patterns, and from there to develop a software tool that will provide a highly useful defensive tool that helps detect and highlight these patterns.

Revitalizing The Puerto Rican Economy After Hurricane Maria, Aditya Mehta

The Cardinal Edge

Puerto Rico is an island in the Caribbean that is an unincorporated territory of the U.S. It is naturally beautiful and caters heavily to tourists. However, it is currently in the midst of an economic crisis that has been building for years and is struggling to rebuild in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria. Additionally, popular culture and statistics have demonstrated that many Puerto Ricans are emigrating from the island. Puerto Rico must address these issues to ensure that its citizens can continue to have a good quality of life on the island. To do this, the U.S. government must work …

Odu Economist Outlines Costs Resulting From Unchecked Sea Level Rise, Brendan O'Hallarn

News Items

No abstract provided.

Language And Power In Social Movements: Hearing All The Voices In Food System Advocacy Narratives, Dianna Winslow

Green Humanities: A Journal of Ecological Thought in Literature, Philosophy & the Arts

[From first paragraph] Everyone must eat. It is this immediate and personal connection to food which drives public and scholarly interest in the complex narratives emerging in what is becoming known as the “food movement”—activism on a global scale that is challenging how the industrialized production, distribution and consumption of food is affecting environmental conditions, food sovereignty and security, human health and wellness, and cultural identities. As the number of food advocacy groups promoting different, yet overlapping, public concerns continues to increase, so does the flow of language used by these groups to shape collective identities and political stances, which …

Cnn-Lstm Vs Ann: Option Pricing Theory, Edward Chang

Undergraduate Student Research Internships Conference

The modern derivatives market has been steadily growing since the development of the first accurate option pricing model by Fischer Black, Robert Merton, and Myron Scholes. Since then, there have been many different approaches to more accurately price options like the binomial option pricing model and approaches using technology such as machine learning. There are many different research papers on option pricing with artificial neural networks (“ANN”) but not many with other neural network types. We contribute to the existing literature by developing a convolutional neural network – long short-term memory (“CNN-LSTM”) model to price options and compare it to …

Toward Informatics-Enabled Preparedness For Natural Hazards To Minimize Health Impacts Of Climate Change, Jimmy Phuong, Naomi O. Riches, Luca Calzoni, Gora Datta, Deborah Duran, Asiyah Yu Lin, Ramesh P. Singh, Anthony E. Solomonides, Noreen Y. Whysel, Ramakanth Kavuluru

Publications and Research

Natural hazards (NHs) associated with climate change have been increasing in frequency and intensity. These acute events impact humans both directly and through their effects on social and environmental determinants of health. Rather than relying on a fully reactive incident response disposition, it is crucial to ramp up preparedness initiatives for worsening case scenarios. In this perspective, we review the landscape of NH effects for human health and explore the potential of health informatics to address associated challenges, specifically from a preparedness angle. We outline important components in a health informatics agenda for hazard preparedness involving hazard-disease associations, social determinants …

Warming Of The Willamette River, 1850–Present: The Effects Of Climate Change And Direct Human Interventions, Stefan Talke, David Jay, Heida Diefenderfer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Using archival research methods, we found and combined data from multiple sources to produce a unique, 140 year record of daily water temperature (Tw) in the lower Willamette River, Oregon (1881–1890, 1941–present). Additional daily weather and river flow records from the 1850s onwards are used to develop and validate a statistical regression model of Tw for 1850–2020. The model simulates the time-lagged response of Tw to air temperature and river flow, and is calibrated for three distinct time periods: the late 19th, mid 20th, and early 21st centuries. Results show that Tw has trended upwards at ~1.1 °C …

Geographic Proximity To Primary Care Providers As A Risk-Assessment Criterion For Quality Performance Measures, Nathaniel Bell, Ana Lopez-De Fede Ph.D., Bo Cai Ph.D., John Brooks Ph.D.

Publications

Importance Previous studies have found a mixed association between Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH) designation and improvements in primary care quality indicators, including avoidable pediatric emergency department (ED) encounters. Whether these associations persist after accounting for the geographic locations of providers relative to where patients reside is unknown. Objective To examine the association between geographic proximity to primary care providers versus hospitals and risk of avoidable and potentially avoidable ED visits among children with pre-existing diagnosis of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder or asthma. Methods Retrospective cohort study of a panel of pediatric Medicaid claims data from the South Carolina from 2016–2018 for 2,959 …

The Global Climate Change Knowledge And Practices Of 4-H And Extension Youth Educators, Roberta H. Hunter, Hui-Hui Wang, Bryanna J. Nelson, Devarati Bhattacharya

Journal of International Agricultural and Extension Education

4-H and Extension educators who work with youth are uniquely positioned to help them meaningfully learn about global climate change (GCC) in a way that connects to their everyday lives and interests. Yet we don’t have a baseline understanding of these educators’ knowledge of GCC or how they teach about it. This paper presents brief findings of a study intended to fill that gap in knowledge. Educators from six states responded to an online survey in 2020. GCC knowledge varied by topic and by educator instructional focus, with STEM and Civic Engagement educators scoring highest. Questions about greenhouse gasses and …