5,747 research outputs found

    Climate Change and Critical Agrarian Studies

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    Climate change is perhaps the greatest threat to humanity today and plays out as a cruel engine of myriad forms of injustice, violence and destruction. The effects of climate change from human-made emissions of greenhouse gases are devastating and accelerating; yet are uncertain and uneven both in terms of geography and socio-economic impacts. Emerging from the dynamics of capitalism since the industrial revolution — as well as industrialisation under state-led socialism — the consequences of climate change are especially profound for the countryside and its inhabitants. The book interrogates the narratives and strategies that frame climate change and examines the institutionalised responses in agrarian settings, highlighting what exclusions and inclusions result. It explores how different people — in relation to class and other co-constituted axes of social difference such as gender, race, ethnicity, age and occupation — are affected by climate change, as well as the climate adaptation and mitigation responses being implemented in rural areas. The book in turn explores how climate change – and the responses to it - affect processes of social differentiation, trajectories of accumulation and in turn agrarian politics. Finally, the book examines what strategies are required to confront climate change, and the underlying political-economic dynamics that cause it, reflecting on what this means for agrarian struggles across the world. The 26 chapters in this volume explore how the relationship between capitalism and climate change plays out in the rural world and, in particular, the way agrarian struggles connect with the huge challenge of climate change. Through a huge variety of case studies alongside more conceptual chapters, the book makes the often-missing connection between climate change and critical agrarian studies. The book argues that making the connection between climate and agrarian justice is crucial

    Air Quality Research Using Remote Sensing

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    Air pollution is a worldwide environmental hazard that poses serious consequences not only for human health and the climate but also for agriculture, ecosystems, and cultural heritage, among other factors. According to the WHO, there are 8 million premature deaths every year as a result of exposure to ambient air pollution. In addition, more than 90% of the world’s population live in areas where the air quality is poor, exceeding the recommended limits. On the other hand, air pollution and the climate co-influence one another through complex physicochemical interactions in the atmosphere that alter the Earth’s energy balance and have implications for climate change and the air quality. It is important to measure specific atmospheric parameters and pollutant compound concentrations, monitor their variations, and analyze different scenarios with the aim of assessing the air pollution levels and developing early warning and forecast systems as a means of improving the air quality and safeguarding public health. Such measures can also form part of efforts to achieve a reduction in the number of air pollution casualties and mitigate climate change phenomena. This book contains contributions focusing on remote sensing techniques for evaluating air quality, including the use of in situ data, modeling approaches, and the synthesis of different instrumentations and techniques. The papers published in this book highlight the importance and relevance of air quality studies and the potential of remote sensing, particularly that conducted from Earth observation platforms, to shed light on this topic

    Sensing Collectives: Aesthetic and Political Practices Intertwined

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    Are aesthetics and politics really two different things? The book takes a new look at how they intertwine, by turning from theory to practice. Case studies trace how sensory experiences are created and how collective interests are shaped. They investigate how aesthetics and politics are entangled, both in building and disrupting collective orders, in governance and innovation. This ranges from populist rallies and artistic activism over alternative lifestyles and consumer culture to corporate PR and governmental policies. Authors are academics and artists. The result is a new mapping of the intermingling and co-constitution of aesthetics and politics in engagements with collective orders

    Constitutions of Value

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    Gathering an interdisciplinary range of cutting-edge scholars, this book addresses legal constitutions of value. Global value production and transnational value practices that rely on exploitation and extraction have left us with toxic commons and a damaged planet. Against this situation, the book examines law’s fundamental role in institutions of value production and valuation. Utilising pathbreaking theoretical approaches, it problematizes mainstream efforts to redeem institutions of value production by recoupling them with progressive values. Aiming beyond radical critique, the book opens up the possibility of imagining and enacting new and different value practices. This wide-ranging and accessible book will appeal to international lawyers, socio-legal scholars, those working at the intersections of law and economy and others, in politics, economics, environmental studies and elsewhere, who are concerned with rethinking our current ideas of what has value, what does not, and whether and how value may be revalued

    The U.S. Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS): A Prototype User Valuation

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    The Integrated Ocean Observing System of the United States provides a large variety of oceanographic and related data at no charge through 11 Regional Associations. Since the data is distributed without price it is difficult to determine the economic value of the data. That value is useful in explaining and justifying the investment in ocean observing. This study applies discrete choice modeling to determine valuation of the data for users of data through the RA websites. The study found annual values of 190to190 to 220 million, and these estimates are considered highly conservative. A guide for replication of the valuation study is included

    Big Data - Supply Chain Management Framework for Forecasting: Data Preprocessing and Machine Learning Techniques

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    This article intends to systematically identify and comparatively analyze state-of-the-art supply chain (SC) forecasting strategies and technologies. A novel framework has been proposed incorporating Big Data Analytics in SC Management (problem identification, data sources, exploratory data analysis, machine-learning model training, hyperparameter tuning, performance evaluation, and optimization), forecasting effects on human-workforce, inventory, and overall SC. Initially, the need to collect data according to SC strategy and how to collect them has been discussed. The article discusses the need for different types of forecasting according to the period or SC objective. The SC KPIs and the error-measurement systems have been recommended to optimize the top-performing model. The adverse effects of phantom inventory on forecasting and the dependence of managerial decisions on the SC KPIs for determining model performance parameters and improving operations management, transparency, and planning efficiency have been illustrated. The cyclic connection within the framework introduces preprocessing optimization based on the post-process KPIs, optimizing the overall control process (inventory management, workforce determination, cost, production and capacity planning). The contribution of this research lies in the standard SC process framework proposal, recommended forecasting data analysis, forecasting effects on SC performance, machine learning algorithms optimization followed, and in shedding light on future research

    University of Windsor Graduate Calendar 2023 Winter

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    https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/universitywindsorgraduatecalendars/1026/thumbnail.jp

    Refining terrestrial biosphere feedbacks to climate change through precise characterization of terrestrial vegetation

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    Climate change is primarily driven by the human activities of fossil fuel combustion and land use change, which together result in the emissions of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide (COâ‚‚). The terrestrial biosphere currently absorbs about a third of total anthropogenic COâ‚‚ emissions, mostly through primary production by vegetation. The continued function of vegetation as a COâ‚‚ sink is uncertain, as climate change has the potential to enhance or restrict the carbon uptake capacity of vegetation. Uncertainty in terrestrial vegetation function in the context of climate change, due in part to a lack of precise observations of leaf biochemistry and function with which to develop models, therefore limits the confidence of climate change projections. In its entirety, this thesis examines the potential for more precise observations of leaf function and their integration across a variety of models and observational scales. The first chapter provides an introductory overview of the subsequent four chapters and how each compliments the other. The second chapter demonstrates the role of the terrestrial biosphere in influencing the relationship between temperature change and cumulative COâ‚‚ emissions. The third chapter provides adaptations to current radiative transfer modelling approaches to improve estimations of leaf biochemical constituents. The fourth chapter applies high spatiotemporal resolution observations of leaf phenology, the timing of leaf emergence and senescence, across North America to predict species-specific leaf phenology patterns under various emissions scenarios throughout the 21st century. The fifth chapter provides an approach to detect declines in ecosystem processes such as carbon uptake using observational leaf phenology networks. These chapter results indicate that 1) uncertainty in the land-borne fraction of carbon emissions contributes largely to uncertainty in the relationship between temperature change and emissions, 2) spectral subdomains and prior estimation of leaf structure improves leaf biochemistry estimations, 3) leaf senescence timing may diverge between boreal and temperate species under a high emissions scenario, and 4) declines in vegetational carbon uptake can be accurately detected using quantitative phenocam-based indicators. The fundamental and technical insights provided through this thesis will facilitate more reliable and functionally resolved projections of terrestrial biosphere feedbacks to climate change

    Valuing Social Data

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    Social data production is a unique form of value creation that characterizes informational capitalism. Social data production also presents critical challenges for the various legal regimes that are encountering it. This Article provides legal scholars and policymakers with the tools to comprehend this new form of value creation through two descriptive contributions. First, it presents a theoretical account of social data, a mode of production which is cultivated and exploited for two distinct (albeit related) forms of value: prediction value and exchange value. Second, it creates and defends a taxonomy of three “scripts” that companies follow to build up and leverage prediction value and describes the normative and legal ramifications of these scripts.The Article then applies these descriptive contributions to demonstrate how legal regimes are failing to effectively regulate social data value creation. Through the examples of tax law and data privacy law, it demonstrates these struggles in both legal regimes that have historically regulated value creation, like tax law, and legal regimes that have been newly tasked with regulating value creation by informational capitalism, like privacy and data protection law.The Article argues that separately analyzing data’s prediction value and its exchange value may be helpful to understanding the challenges the law faces in governing social data production and the political economy surrounding such production. This improved understanding will equip legal scholars to better confront the harms of law’s failures in the face of informational capitalism, reduce legal arbitrage by powerful actors, and facilitate opportunities to maximize the beneficial potential of social data value
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