Water Quality Trading and Offset Initiatives in the U.S.: A Comprehensive Survey

This document summarizes water quality trading and offset initiatives in the United States, including state-wide policies and recent proposals. The following format was used to present information on each program. We attempted to have each program summary reviewed by at least one contact person for program accuracy. In the cases where this review occurred, we added the statement "Reviewed by.." at the end of the case summary

Society for Improving Medical Professional Learning Collaborative: What’s It All About?

The Society for Improving Medical Professional Learning (SIMPL) Collaborative is a non-profit, educational, quality improvement consortium focused on developing tools, curricula, and policies to improve physician training. The goal is to provide educators and learners with convenient, reliable, and valid evaluation tools for frequent, real-time workplace assessment and feedback. The SIMPL Operating Room application provides this platform. It was developed to provide high-quality, time-sensitive, procedural feedback. Its objective is to facilitate intra-rotation corrections. SIMPL is available to all residency programs and has matured to include over 175 residency programs, involving 19 different specialties, 4000 trainees, 5000 attendings, and 354,800 evaluations in 3 countries. At least 52 peer-reviewed manuscripts have used the evolving database. We have performed an expert narrative review of the entire SIMPL literature (primary research studies, reviews, and websites) to discuss the unique lessons learned from this large collaborative experience. SIMPL can be the core of a competency-based operative skills assessment that is incorporated into medical training, assessment, and certification. Higher quality feedback is provided via SIMPL compared to the routine end-of-rotation evaluations with a corrective comment 60% of the time versus 15%, respectively. A high overall correlation between residents and faculty within case complexity has also been documented (r = 0.76, P \u3c .0001), technical performance (r = 0.66, P \u3c .0001), and autonomy (r = 0.56, P \u3c .0001). The goal of the SIMPL initiative is to use resident performance to drive continuous quality improvement of the individual, programs, and larger medical system

U.S. alternative fuel policy, 1975-2007

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (pages 296-310).This dissertation investigates the policy-making process that led to three "crash programs" for alternative fuels after energy shocks in the 1970s and early 2000s: (1) the proposed Energy Independence Authority in 1975-1976, (2) the Synthetic Fuels Corporation in 1979-1980, and (3) the revised Renewable Fuel Standard in 2007. These were massively ambitious programs, with enormous budgets and unachievable technological goals. What makes them truly puzzling, though, is that they were major policies that emerged without major advocates. Although various interest groups and constituencies supported the development of alternative fuels, neither the powerful industry lobbies (oil, coal, corn, ethanol) nor the public interest groups (environment) had previously advocated for interventions of this scope and scale. This presents a fundamental empirical puzzle for public policy scholars, as it contradicts our understanding of the drivers of policy change. Typically, the policy process literature portrays radical policy change as resulting from the strategic efforts of interest or advocacy groups during a window of opportunity. Here, however, radical policy change occurred in the absence of lobbying or advocacy efforts. What explains this phenomenon? How do we account for the creation of these programs? What conditions and sequence of decision-making led to these policy outcomes? This dissertation develops an alternative model of "politician-driven policymaking." Public alarm over a deepening national crisis is the catalyst for this process. It gives rise to two coupled mechanisms: "bidding up," in which the President and Congress compete for leadership during the crisis, and "signing on," in which interest groups and minority Congressional groups bargain and often bandwagon with the legislative proposals.by Hanna L. Breetz.Ph.D

Measures of a sustainable commute as a predictor of happiness

The ways in which we travel—by what mode, for how long, and for what purpose—can affect our sense of happiness and well-being. This paper assesses the relationships between measures of the sustainability of transportation systems in U.S. metropolitan areas and subjective well-being. Associations between self-reported happiness levels from the Gallup Healthways Well-being Index and commute data were examined for 187 core-based statistical areas (CBSA). Wealsosupplementthisquantitativeanalysisthroughbriefcasestudiesofhigh-andlow-performing happiness cities. Our quantitative results indicate that regions with higher commute mode shares by non-automobile modes generally had higher well-being scores, even when controlling for important economic predictors of happiness. We also find that pro-sustainable transportation policies can have implications for population-wide happiness and well-being. Our case studies indicate that both high and low scoring happiness cities demonstrate a dedicated commitment to improving sustainable transportation infrastructure. Our study suggests that cities that provide incentives for residents to use more sustainable commute modes may offer greater opportunity for happiness than those that do not

Post-AIT Review of Real Party in Interest Decisions

Throughout the Patent Trial and Appeal Board’s (“PTAB”) history, patent owners have tried to leverage a petitioner’s alleged failure to name all real parties-in-interest (“RPIs”) as a way to achieve denial of an inter partes review (“IPR”) petition or trial termination. The effectiveness of those efforts has ebbed and flowed. Initially, some PTAB panels viewed naming of RPIs as a jurisdictional requirement, concluding that RPI-naming errors were not fixable after the 35 U.S.C. § 315(b) one-year bar. Petitioners could lose their petition filing date based on RPI missteps, resulting in then untimely petitions. Later decisions backed away from that hardline stance, finding that some RPI errors made without deceptive intent were fixable. Regardless, petitioners are tasked with identifying RPIs to the best of their ability