Green in Your Wallet or a Green Planet: Views on Government Spending and Climate Change

The scientific community is a near consensus that climate change is not only anthropogenic but is also a major threat to people around the world. Despite the alarm bells from the scientific community many people in the United States simply deny the science of climate change. Many studies have targeted level of education, party membership, and gender in their role in influencing how individuals perceive climate change. This study showed that views on government spending plays a very important role in the importance of the environment. Individuals who supported decreased government spending tend to view jobs as more important than the environment when compared to individuals who supported increased government spending, this is true among both Republicans and non-Republicans. Generally speaking, the Republican platform typically involves the economy over the environment, and the Democratic platform typically involves more environmentally friendly action. This study posits Republicans that believed the government should increase spending in 2012 were indistinguishable from non-Republicans who supported reductions in government spending. The inability to distinguish between republicans who believe in increased spending and non-republicans who believe in increased spending suggests that views on the environment may be more than simply a partisan issue they may simply have to do with willingness to spend money on the environment

Blue Sky Olympics: Satellite Observations of Air Quality During the 2008 Beijing Olympics

China has imposed short-term emission control regulations on industry and transportation to quickly improve air quality during certain events, including the 2008 Summer Olympic Games. Previous research noted reductions in NO2 vertical column density, CO emissions, CO2 emissions, and Aerosol Optical Depth (AOD). NO2 and SO2 decreased in neighboring provinces, during this time period. Using MODIS level-2 atmospheric aerosol product (MYD04_L2) data, processed by the dark target algorithm, this study observes trends in regional AOD and temporal change in AOD during the Olympic emissions reduction program. 2008 observations are referenced against AOD observations from 2003 to 2013, within 9-day intervals from June 23rd to October 24th and 40 km bands extending up to 240 km from the Beijing municipal limits. During the Olympics, median AOD values were below median AOD values from the reference period. AOD levels returned to above reference period levels in the September 12th to September 20th period, before the end of the Special Olympics in Beijing. During the Olympic period, reductions in AOD values, compared to the reference period were observed in regions within 80 km of Beijing, while an increase in AOD values was present in regions 120 km to 240 km from Beijing

The Life History of Folsomia Candida (Willem) (Collembola: Isotomidae) Relative to Temperature

The parthenogenetic mode of reproduction in Collembola, although frequently questioned in the past (Schaller, 1953; Mayer, 1957; Falkenhan, 1932), has only recently been recorded and confirmed for several species; Onychiutus parthenogeneticus Choudhuri (Choudhuri, 1958), Folsomia candida (Willem) (Goto, 1960; Marshall and Kevan, 1962; Green, 1964; Husson and Paldvody, 1967), Folsomia cavicola Cassagnau and Delamare (Goto, 1960), Tullbergia krausbaueri (Bomer) (Hale, 1966; Petersen, 1971), and Isotoma notabilis Schaffer (Petersen, 1971). Sex-ratios in populations of the above cited species are often unknown. Existing data indicate that the composition of a population may vary with the geographical distribution of the species. Populations of Folsomia candida (Willem), known to be bisexual in England (Goto, 1960), have been found so far to consist entirely of females in Canada (Sharma and Kevan, 1963a) and in Michigan (Snider, 1973). Similar to I. notabilis and T. krausbaueri (Petersen, 1971), investigations throughout the year and over larger geographic areas are necessary before northern USA and Canada F. candida may be labeled as obligatory parthenogenetic. Snider (1973) recorded in detail the life cycle of F. candida at 21°C. The present study provides information on the influence of temperature on the bionomics of the species

The evolution of conifolds

We simulate the gravitational dynamics of the conifold geometries (resolved and deformed) involved in the description of certain compact spacetimes. As the cycles of the conifold collapse towards a singular geometry we find that a horizon develops, shielding the external spacetime from the curvature singularity of the newly formed black hole. The structure of the black hole is examined for a range of initial conditions, and we find a candidate black-hole solution for the final state of the collapse.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure