The Review - Spring 2003

In This Issue 3 Message From the Dean 4 Special Occasions 5 Gail Seygal (OT ’86) - Animal Touch 6 War Stories 6 JAVA Night 8 Federal Stafford and Consolidation Loans 9 OT Students Visit Cuba 10 Penny Kroll, New PT Chair 10 New DPT 11 TJU Nursing Reimbursement 11 Lab Sciences Changes Its Name 12 Jeff-At-Night 12 Lambda Nu 13 Alumni Events 19 JCHP Awards 21 Student Life Award 22 PT Convocation 23 JCHP Commencemen

Economic Measurements and Quality of Life in Mexico

Using the Genuine Progress Indicator (GPI), the article seeks to evaluate the quality of life in modern Mexico. The GPI employs the same indicators used to arrive at per capita GDP, but adds positive and negative monetary and non-monetary actors that affect people\u27s lives. Monetary factors include income distribution, increased health care cost due to air and water pollution, and loss of wetlands. Non-monetary factors involve parenting, time spent in highways, loss of leisure time, the cost of volunteer work, and other social costs. If one takes these into account, the purchasing power and quality of life of Mexican citizens are considerably lower than the per capita GDP would indicate

Creating insurance markets for natural disaster risk in lower income countries: the potential role for securitization

This paper considers the potential for securitizing index-based insurance products that transfer weather and natural disaster risks from lower income countries. The paper begins with a brief overview of why markets for natural disaster risks are important in lower income countries and a review of some recent activities using index-based weather insurance. Next, the paper explains how natural disaster risks are handled in higher income countries. These examples along with the example of an innovative index-based livestock insurance pilot project in Mongolia illustrate how layers, or tranches, of natural disaster risk can be financed during the product development phase by creating structures similar to the Special Purpose Vehicles used in catastrophe bond, mortgage bond, and the emerging microfinance bond markets. We refer to these investment alternatives as micro-CAT bonds since the principal amounts would be small relative to the existing CAT bond market.Catastrophe risk, index insurance, weather risks, socially responsible investing, reinsurance, Risk and Uncertainty,

The First Year of Teaching Classroom Research to Increase Student Learning

Victor and Janisha were two of the focal students in Daniels's research project on her first year of teaching in an urban public school. Together they reflect the two major groups in this high school that has 45% Latino, 35% African American, ..

A Scientific Review of the Impact of UK Ruminant Livestock on Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Climate change is a subject of global environmental concern. The UK has seen a progressive strengthening of political resolve to address the problems associated with emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs), principally carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O). Although agriculture globally, and ruminant livestock production in particular, is a net contributor to GHG emissions, generalizations about impacts on climate change often fail to distinguish between different systems of production, advances in technology, and the role of extensive grazing lands in contributing to ecological services and food production in situations where other forms of farming are impractical. Against this background, the overall aim of this review was therefore to conduct an independent desk-based analysis of the scientific evidence of the impacts of the UK’s forage-based livestock sectors (beef, sheep and dairy production) on emissions of the three main GHGs: carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. The study has been confined to impacts up to the ‘farm gate’ and it has examined and reviewed the evidence to answer the following questions: How do GHG emissions from UK beef, sheep and dairy production compare with the situation in other countries/regions, such as South America and NZ, and selected EU countries. Within the UK how do various intensive and extensive systems of dairy, beef cattle and sheep production compare in terms of their respective emissions balances? What are the research findings on measures that can or have been adopted to reduce net GHG emissions, and what is the potential for further adoption by the industry in the UK? What are the likely future impacts of climate change on the UK ruminant livestock industry, particularly in comparison with its competitors? Main findings: Total UK agricultural GHG emissions have decreased by 17% since 1990. Methane (CH4) emissions have decreased by 52% since 1990, through a combination of reduced livestock numbers and more efficient feeding. There is evidence that UK ruminant agriculture compares favourably with other countries, and that the rate of reduction of total agricultural GHGs in the UK in recent years has been similar to, or greater than, several competitor countries. There is a wide degree of uncertainty over the exact levels of emissions of N2O and evidence suggests that UK emissions are lower than those based on the IPCC methodology. The development of more precise GHG inventories will address these uncertainties. Increases in milk yields and technical feed improvements have been associated with reductions in GHG emissions per litre of milk. The UK beef sector has also benefited from technical feed improvements, and UK beef production, and increasingly also lamb production, is mainly carried out over a short production cycle; this contributes to reducing the GHG emissions per animal and thus per unit of output. Livestock in upland and marginal areas may be associated with high CH4 emissions per unit of output (due to relatively low quality forage) but low emissions per ha. Many of these areas also have a role in CH4 capture, and their management via low intensity beef and sheep grazing is also important in achieving wider agri-environmental objectives.Climate Change, Ruminant Livestock, Greenhouse Gases, UK, Agricultural and Food Policy, Environmental Economics and Policy, Livestock Production/Industries,

Demand Response Strategy Based on Reinforcement Learning and Fuzzy Reasoning for Home Energy Management

As energy demand continues to increase, demand response (DR) programs in the electricity distribution grid are gaining momentum and their adoption is set to grow gradually over the years ahead. Demand response schemes seek to incentivise consumers to use green energy and reduce their electricity usage during peak periods which helps support grid balancing of supply-demand and generate revenue by selling surplus of energy back to the grid. This paper proposes an effective energy management system for residential demand response using Reinforcement Learning (RL) and Fuzzy Reasoning (FR). RL is considered as a model-free control strategy which learns from the interaction with its environment by performing actions and evaluating the results. The proposed algorithm considers human preference by directly integrating user feedback into its control logic using fuzzy reasoning as reward functions. Q-learning, a RL strategy based on a reward mechanism, is used to make optimal decisions to schedule the operation of smart home appliances by shifting controllable appliances from peak periods, when electricity prices are high, to off-peak hours, when electricity prices are lower without affecting the customer’s preferences. The proposed approach works with a single agent to control 14 household appliances and uses a reduced number of state-action pairs and fuzzy logic for rewards functions to evaluate an action taken for a certain state. The simulation results show that the proposed appliances scheduling approach can smooth the power consumption profile and minimise the electricity cost while considering user’s preferences, user’s feedbacks on each action taken and his/her preference settings. A user-interface is developed in MATLAB/Simulink for the Home Energy Management System (HEMS) to demonstrate the proposed DR scheme. The simulation tool includes features such as smart appliances, electricity pricing signals, smart meters, solar photovoltaic generation, battery energy storage, electric vehicle and grid supply.Peer reviewe

Fostering collective action through participation in natural resource and environmental management: An integrative and interpretative narrative review using the IAD, NAS and SES frameworks

Solving humanity's social-environmental challenges calls for collective action by relevant actors. Hence, involving these actors in the policy process has been deemed both necessary and promising. But how and to what extent can participatory policy interventions (PIs) foster collective action for sustainable environmental and natural resource management? Lab and lab-in-the-field experiments on co-operation in the context of collective action challenges (i.e. social dilemmas) and case study research on participatory processes both offer insights into this question but have hitherto mainly remained unconnected. This article reviews insights from these two streams of literature in tandem, synthesising and analysing them using the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework in combination with the network of action situations (NAS) framework and the social-ecological systems (SES) framework. We thus perform an integrative and interpretative narrative review to draw a richer and more nuanced picture of PIs: their potential impacts, their (institutional and behavioural) mechanisms and challenges, and caveats and recommendations for their design and implementation. Our review shows that PIs can indeed foster collective action by (a) helping the relevant actors craft suitable and legitimate institutional arrangements and (b) addressing and/or influencing actors' attributes of relevance to collective action, namely their individual and shared understandings, beliefs and preferences. To fulfil this potential, the organisers and sponsors of PIs must address and link to the broader context through soundly designed and implemented processes. Complementary follow-up, enforcement and conflict resolution mechanisms are necessary to nurture, reassure and sustain understandings, beliefs and preferences that undergird trust-building and collective action. The conceptual framework developed for the review can help researchers and practitioners further assess these insights, disentangle PIs' mechanisms and impacts, and integrate the research and practice of participatory governance and collective action

Sustaining inclusive collective action that links across economic and ecological scales in upper watersheds

The Sustaining inclusive Collective Action that Links across Economic and Ecological Scales in upper watersheds (Scales) project fits mainly in People and Water in Catchments Theme (Theme 2) of the CPWF. Its goal is to contribute to poverty alleviation in the upper watersheds of the tropics through improved collective action for watershed resource management within and across social-spatial scales. Scales worked though an integrated program of collaborative action research, development, and capacity building in key catchments of the Nile and Andes basins, as well as through synthesis and dissemination of lessons and approaches across basins, and conceptual modeling and analysis. The project was led by the International Center for Tropical Agriculture (CIAT), and involved 9 partner organization