COVID-19 Response: Resources for Small and Mid-Size Farms in Mississippi

The COVID-19 pandemic presents a number of new and difficult challenges for families, small business owners, and food producers across the country. This Issue Brief provides an overview of the resources available to small and mid-size farms facing such challenges in Mississippi. The first section outlines current benefit programs that these farms can utilize, including loans and unemployment benefits, as a result of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act and related federal actions. The second section provides policies that the State of Mississippi could enact to provide additional assistance to farms dealing with the crisis

COVID‐19 Response: Feeding Mississippi Children During School Closure

Across the country, states have needed to use school closures and remote learning as strategies for reducing the spread of COVID‐19. On April 14, 2020, Mississippi leaders announced that children would stay home from their school facilities for the rest of the academic year. Extended school closures make it difficult to meet children’s nutritional needs: students who rely on free and reduced‐price meals from the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) and School Breakfast Program (SBP) lose their best source of daily nutrition. About 74% of Mississippi public school students qualify for free or reduced‐price meals; the change could thus negatively impact over 344,000 school‐age children and their families. There are, however, ways for policymakers, schools, and community organizations to ensure that Mississippi children’s nutritional needs are met during this time. This fact sheet outlines opportunities to ensure the availability of adequate meals for low‐income children in Mississippi

The role of bioenergy for global deep decarbonisation: CO 2 removal or low‐carbon energy?

Bioenergy is expected to have a prominent role in limiting global greenhouse emissions to meet the climate change target of the Paris Agreement. Many studies identify negative emissions from bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) as its key contribution, but assume that no other CO2 removal technologies are available. We use a global integrated assessment model, TIAM‐UCL, to investigate the role of bioenergy within the global energy system when direct air capture and afforestation are available as cost‐competitive alternatives to BECCS. We find that the presence of other CO2 removal technologies does not reduce the pressure on biomass resources but changes the use of bioenergy for climate mitigation. While we confirm that when available BECCS offers cheaper decarbonisation pathways, we also find that its use delays the phase‐out of unabated fossil fuels in industry and transport. Further, it displaces renewable electricity generation, potentially increasing the likelihood of missing the Paris Agreement target. We found that the most cost‐effective solution is to invest in a basket of CO2 removal technologies. However, if these technologies rely on CCS, then urgent action is required to ramp up the necessary infrastructure. We conclude that a sustainable biomass supply is critical for decarbonising the global energy system. Since only a few world regions carry the burden of producing the biomass resource and store CO2 in geological storage, adequate international collaboration, policies, and standards will be needed to realise this resource while avoiding undesired land‐use change

Delta Directions Consortium (DDC): Summary of Collaborative Pathways

The Delta Directions Consortium is an interdisciplinary network of individuals, academic institutions, non-profit organizations, and foundations that work together to create positive social change in the multi-state Mississippi Delta Region. Goals include improving public health and promoting socioeconomic development. The Consortium is not an independent non-profit organization but, rather, an alliance of partners committed to collaborative and innovative problem-solving. This document provides a summary of pathways for partners in the Delta Directions Consortium, with emphasis on substantive topics and projects. It should be read as a living document to frame ideas and approaches that will be adapted in response to the needs and interests of core partners and diverse stakeholders

High-Resolution Vertical Habitat Mapping of a Deep-Sea Cliff offshore Greenland

Recent advances in deep-sea exploration with underwater vehicles have led to the discovery of vertical environments inhabited by a diverse sessile fauna. However, despite their ecological importance, vertical habitats remain poorly characterized by conventional downward-looking survey techniques. Here we present a high-resolution 3-dimensional habitat map of a vertical cliff hosting a suspension-feeding community at the flank of an underwater glacial trough in the Greenland waters of the Labrador Sea. Using a forward-looking set-up on a Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV), a high-resolution multibeam echosounder was used to map out the topography of the deep-sea terrain, including, for the first time, the backscatter intensity. Navigational accuracy was improved through a combination of the USBL and the DVL navigation of the ROV. Multi-scale terrain descriptors were derived and assigned to the 3D point cloud of the terrain. Following an unsupervised habitat mapping approach, the application of a K-means clustering revealed four potential habitat types, driven by geomorphology, backscatter and fine-scale features. Using groundtruthing seabed images, the ecological significance of the four habitat clusters was assessed in order to evaluate the benefit of unsupervised habitat mapping for further fine-scale ecological studies of vertical environments. This study demonstrates the importance of a priori knowledge of the terrain around habitats that are rarely explored for ecological investigations. It also emphasizes the importance of remote characterization of habitat distribution for assessing the representativeness of benthic faunal studies often constrained by time-limited sampling activities. This case study further identifies current limitations (e.g., navigation accuracy, irregular terrain acquisition difficulties) that can potentially limit the use of deep-sea terrain models for fine-scale investigations

Lost learnings: Breaking the silence of failure in the energy and development sector

It is often said that in order to succeed, one most fail and yet, all too often, we fail to talk about failure. This is particularly true in energy and development (E&D), a sector that faces complex challenges leading to relatively high chances of project failure. This paper explores failure in E&D, specifically how it is discussed, its impact and mechanisms encourage discussion of failure. This was achieved through a review of academic literature, workshops and informal interviews, and is the first study to holistically examine the important topic of failure in E&D. The results show that failure is complex and linked to multiple factors. There is an important distinction to be made between “productive failures”, where new learnings are assimilated and shared, and “unproductive failures”, where this does not happen. Although failed projects consume scarce resources, reduce the productivity of the sector and increase the perceived risk of future projects, we argue that failure is a necessary part of experimentation and risk taking that generates new knowledge and important learnings. Changes to the nature of funding in the sector, compulsory project or research registration, open-source reporting on productive failure and networks that provide safe spaces for peer-to-peer learning could improve openness about failure. These mechanisms could increase the likelihood of future project success and accelerate progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 7

A Discrete Version of the Inverse Scattering Problem and the J-matrix Method

The problem of the Hamiltonian matrix in the oscillator and Laguerre basis construction from the S-matrix is treated in the context of the algebraic analogue of the Marchenko method.Comment: 11 pages. The Laguerre basis case is adde

Biological Records Centre Annual Report 2005-2006

The period covered by this report is the first year of a new six-year partnership between CEH and JNCC. For this period, there is increased emphasis on targeted survey, on analysis and interpretation and on communications and outreach. These activities were always part of BRC’s work, but they have been given greater prominence as a result of rapid developments in information technology. Data are increasingly reaching BRC in electronic form, so that the effort of data entry and collation is reduced. The data, collected by many volunteers and then collated and analysed at BRC, document the changing status and distribution of plants and animals in Britain. Distribution maps are published in atlases and are available via the internet through the NBN Gateway. The effects of change or loss of habitats, the influence of climate change and the consequences of changing water quality are all examples of the environmental factors that affect our biodiversity and which BRC aims to document and understand. The results are vital for developing environmental policies, to support conservation, and for fundamental ecological research. BRC is funded jointly by JNCC and NERC through a partnership based on a Memorandum of Agreement (MoA). The partnership started in 1973 when the Nature Conservancy was divided to form the successor bodies Nature Conservancy Council (NCC) and Institute of Terrestrial Ecology (ITE). NCC was in turn divided further to form JNCC and three Country Agencies, while ITE was merged with other NERC units to form CEH. Through all these changes, the partnership has been maintained. A six-year memorandum of agreement ended on 31 January 2005 (Hill et al. 2005). The present report covers the first full year, 2005-6, of the new agreement for 2005-2010. Rapid progress in information technology continues to be highly beneficial for BRC, whose data are increasingly used by the UK country conservation agencies, environmental consultants, NGOs, research workers, policy makers and volunteers. It is gratifying to know that, through our ability to display data on the National Biodiversity Network (NBN) Gateway, some of our data suppliers now have immediate access to their own data in a convenient form. The year 2005-6 has been one of steady progress, with new datasets added to BRC, substantial additions to existing data, and improved communication with the NBN Gateway. The most high profile activity of the year has been the Harlequin Ladybird Survey, which has enabled us to observe the early stages of colonization by a mobile insect in greater detail than has been possible in any previous case

Influence of Electrification Pathways in the Electricity Sector of Ethiopia—Policy Implications Linking Spatial Electrification Analysis and Medium to Long-Term Energy Planning

Ethiopia is a low-income country, with low electricity access (45%) and an inefficient power transmission network. The government aims to achieve universal access and become an electricity exporter in the region by 2025. This study provides an invaluable perspective on different aspects of Ethiopia’s energy transition, focusing on achieving universal access and covering the country’s electricity needs during 2015–2065. We co-developed and investigated three scenarios to examine the policy and technology levels available to the government to meet their national priorities. To conduct this analysis, we soft-linked OnSSET, a modelling tool used for geospatial analysis, with OSeMOSYS, a cost-optimization modelling tool used for medium to long-run energy planning. Our results show that the country needs to diversify its power generation system to achieve universal access and cover its future electricity needs by increasing its overall carbon dioxide emissions and fully exploit hydropower. With the aim of achieving universal access by 2025, the newly electrified population is supplied primarily by the grid (65%), followed by stand-alone (32%) technologies. Similarly, until 2065, most of the electrified people by 2025 will continue to be grid-connected (99%). The country’s exports will increase to 17 TWh by 2065, up from 832 GWh in 2015, leading to a cumulative rise in electricity export revenues of 184 billion USD

Energy system development pathways for Ethiopia: Final project report

This report forms a deliverable of the Energy System Development Pathways for Ethiopia (PATHWAYS) project. The project explored pathways for Ethiopia’s electricity system to 2065 with the use of open-source energy system models, and developed local capacity to use and build on those models for the country’s energy planning and policy decision-support. A participatory methodology was adopted, which engaged local experts and stakeholders in the co-creation of knowledge, through multiple and mixed methods of inquiry typically adopted in fields of engineering and the social sciences. Some of these engagement activities included workshops and interviews that drew upon local expertise to shape the narratives and boundaries on the possible futures for Ethiopia’s electricity system, as well as a household survey on energy consumer behaviour. In addition, capacity development workshops were conducted; training students, academics, and staff of the government, not-for-profit and the private sector on the use of the Open-Source Energy System Modelling framework (OSeMOSYS). This report provides the synthesised findings of the project and highlights ways of building on its activities