The closer the better? Examining support for a large urban redevelopment project in Atlanta

The Atlanta BeltLine (BeltLine) is a large urban redevelopment project that is transforming 22 miles of historical railroad corridors into parks, trails, pedestrian-friendly transit, and affordable housing in the center of Atlanta, Georgia. This study examines how proximity to the BeltLine and other factors relate to public support for it, with data from a general public survey conducted in the summer of 2009. The result shows that support significantly declines as distance to the BeltLine increases. However, after controlling for expected use of the BeltLine parks and transit, the role of distance fades. Further, the results show that being a parent within the city limits is associated with the support for the BeltLine, which implies that the concern over tax increment financing (TIF) affecting future school quality hampers the support of the project. The findings point to individual tastes and family circumstances as driving support for the redevelopment project, rather than strictly property-specific attributes (as the homevoter hypothesis would predict). Another contribution of this study is to address the technical problem of missing precise spatial location values. Several imputation techniques are used to demonstrate the risks and remedies to missing spatial data

Strategic Behavior in Certifying Green Buildings: An Inquiry of the Non-building Performance Value

This study determines the magnitude of the market signaling effect arising from Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification for green buildings and explores the mechanisms behind the signaling effect. Previous studies have shown that signaling or marketability plays an important role in the pursuit for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design and equivalent green-building certification. By analyzing all new construction projects receiving Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certification from 2000 to 2012 in the US, this study estimates the relative importance of ‘green’ signaling. This broad perspective using project-level data enables an analysis of some drivers of signaling and the pursuit of marketing benefits. The roles of local competition and market conditions, as well as municipal regulations are examined, especially as they differ between types of building owners (e.g., for-profit firms, governments, nonprofits). The results indicate that the non-building performance value—value captured by Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design signals above and beyond the specific building attributes that Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certifies—dominates the attainment of Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design scores around certification tier thresholds. Further, strong evidence of spatial clustering of this non-building performance value for some owner types indicates that for-profit owners may be more responsive to local competition than non-profit owners. Local legislative mandates predict greater signaling intensity by government-owned buildings, as expected, but for-profit-owned projects tend to signal less, even after controls for local conditions. The results highlight the importance of local conditions, including peer effects and regulations, in driving non-building performance values across a wide range of green buildings

An empirical study of attitudes towards green urban development

This study focuses on how spatial circumstances affect property owners’ preference toward sustainable urban development, in the form of three-essays. In the first essay, property owners’ preference toward the concept of compact development is identified. Compact development is an increasingly popular concept that includes multiple aspects, such as mixed land use, high density, and pedestrian/transit-friendly options. Previous hedonic literature on the comprehensive effect of compact development is limited. Also, spatial dependence in the data, something likely endemic to compact development, has not yet been thoroughly addressed. This study uses a spatial fixed-effect model, a spatial-autoregressive model with auto-regressive disturbances (SARAR), and a spatial fixed-effect SARAR model to determine the price effect of “compactness” in a major U.S. metropolitan area. By analyzing of 47,000 sales records in Fulton County over a decade, this study indicates that home buyers prefer to have smaller, more diffuse greenspace nearby, rather than a large, concentrated greenspace at a longer walking distance. High parcel density and diverse land use is consistently disvalued, and the premium on accessing public transportation is not identified among all models. No specific trend over time has been observed, despite the recession starting in 2008. Finally, a comprehensive index of compactness shows relatively high willingness-to-pay for compact development. The second essay tests the spatial spillover of signaling within the pursuit of LEED certification. The benefit of pursuing green building certification mainly comes from two aspects: the cost-effectiveness from energy efficiency and the signaling consideration, including the premium on property values, benefits from a better reputation, morality values, or purely pride. By analyzing all new constructions that received LEED certification from 2000 to 2012 (LEED-NC v2.0 to v2.2) in the U.S., this study tries to identify the size of the signaling effects, and spillover of signaling, as building owners pursue LEED certification. The results show that the signaling effect affects decision making in pursuing LEED certification, especially at scores around thresholds. The size of signaling effects differs among different owner types and different certificate levels. For the Gold level or below, government and non-profit-organization owners value signaling more than do profit-seeking firms. At the Platinum level, there is no significant difference among owner types. This study also finds that the signaling effect clusters spatially for government and profit-seeking firms. Finally, the results show that the cluster of signaling is independent from the cluster of LEED buildings, indicating that mechanisms behind the cluster of signaling are different from those of LEED constructions. The third essay tests the distance effect on the support for Atlanta BeltLine. Atlanta BeltLine, a large urban redevelopment project currently underway in the center of Atlanta, transforms 22 miles of historical railroad corridors into parks, trails, pedestrian-friendly transit areas, and affordable housing. This study aims to determine the distance effect on the support of Atlanta BeltLine and whether the implement of Tax Increment Financing (TIF) affects the support. The contributions of this exercise are twofold. First, it demonstrates the risks and remedies to missing spatial data by solving the technical problem of missing precise spatial location values. Second, it tests underlying reasons why distance can help explain the level of support that Atlanta BeltLine has received, with striking implications for theories like the Homevoter hypothesis. Survey data used in this study was conducted in summer 2009, about three years after the declaration of the project. The support by both homeowners and renters significantly declines as distance from the BeltLine increases. However, when residents’ tendency to use BeltLine parks and transits is entered as a variable, the distance effect disappears. By indicating that the distance effect comes from homeowners’ and renters’ the accessibility to BeltLine amenities, the result rejects the homevoter hypothesis, which holds that property value increment is the main mechanism behind support. The results also show that whether or not a homeowner or renter is a parent in City of Atlanta affects a person’s support of the BeltLine. These results lead to the conclusion that the concern of TIF affecting future school quality hampers the support of the project.Ph.D

Spatial Effects in Energy-Efficient Residential HVAC Technology Adoption

Preprint; final version published as: Noonan, D. S., Hsieh, L.-H. C., & Matisoff, D. (2013). Spatial Effects in Energy-Efficient Residential HVAC Technology Adoption. Environment and Behavior, 45(4), 476–503. doi:10.1177/0013916511421664If your neighborhood adopts greener, energy-efficient residential heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) systems, will your proenvironmental behavior become contagious, spilling over into adjacent neighborhoods’ HVAC adoptions? Objective data on more than 300,000 detailed single-family house sale records in the Greater Chicago area from 1992 to 2004 are aggregated to census block-group neighborhoods to answer that question. Spatial lag regression models show that spatial dependence or “contagion” exists for neighborhood adoption of energy-efficient HVACs. Specifically, if 625 of 726 homes in a demonstration neighborhood upgraded to green HVAC, data of this study predict that at least 98 upgrades would occur in adjacent neighborhoods, more than doubling their baseline adoption rates. This spatial multiplier substantially magnifies the effects of factors affecting adoption rates. These results have important policy implications, especially in the context of new standards for neighborhood development, such as Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) or Low-Impact Development standards

Economic, sociological, and neighbor dimensions of energy efficiency adoption behaviors: Evidence from the U.S. residential heating and air conditioning market

This study identifies factors that affect the adoption behavior for residential Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) systems, including a spatial and temporal contagion effect, house characteristics, and other economic and contextual factors. The study draws on a dataset of house sale records in the greater Chicago area, spanning 1992–2004. First-differenced models and restricting the sample to new construction allow separate identification of adoption determinants for homeowners and for developers, respectively. We show that attributes of the building stock and demographics influence adoption decisions of both homeowners and developers. This includes a strong influence of square footage, a modest spatial clustering effect for existing homes, a consistent deterrent effect of higher property tax rates, and a positive influence of neighborhood education levels. Adoption decisions for existing homeowners appear to be driven by different factors than sellers of newly constructed homes. Adoption coincided with multi-story homes for developers, and neighbor adoption rates predicted adoption by existing homeowners but not developers. The results highlight the need for more research into the social context of energy efficiency investment

Pendekatan Teoristis terhadap Alat-alat Inovatif Penangkap Mikroplastik di Lingkungan Perairan

Untuk memfasilitasi peneliti guna melakukan pembelajaran lebih dalam terkait mikroplastik, terdapat beberapa alat baru yang didesain secara khusus untukmenangkap sampel mikroplastik di lingkungan perairan. Sebuah pendekatan dilakukan guna memahami pengaruh desain alat terhadap kapasitas laju aliran air dan penumpukan partikel di dalam alat-alat tersebut. Terdapat tiga desain yang akan diperbandingkan, ketiga desain tersebut memiliki perbedaan struktur serta ukuran pori-pori membran. Dengan menggunakan hukum permeabilitas Darcy, kapasitansi arus aliran air pada masing-masing desain dapat diperbandingkan cara memposisikan faktor-faktor pada rumus Darcy ke dalam bagian-bagian alat penangkap mikroplastik tersebut. Setiap desain memiliki keistimewaan tersendiri, yang penggunaannya dapat diesuaikan pada kondisi pengambilan sampel

The Development of Spatial Attention U-Net for The Recovery of Ionospheric Measurements and The Extraction of Ionospheric Parameters

We train a deep learning artificial neural network model, Spatial Attention U-Net to recover useful ionospheric signals from noisy ionogram data measured by Hualien's Vertical Incidence Pulsed Ionospheric Radar. Our results show that the model can well identify F2 layer ordinary and extraordinary modes (F2o, F2x) and the combined signals of the E layer (ordinary and extraordinary modes and sporadic Es). The model is also capable of identifying some signals that were not labeled. The performance of the model can be significantly degraded by insufficient number of samples in the data set. From the recovered signals, we determine the critical frequencies of F2o and F2x and the intersection frequency between the two signals. The difference between the two critical frequencies is peaking at 0.63 MHz, with the uncertainty being 0.18 MHz.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures, 3 table

An Investigation into the Cytotoxic Effects of 13-Acetoxysarcocrassolide from the Soft Coral Sarcophyton crassocaule on Bladder Cancer Cells

Active compounds from natural products have been widely studied. The anti-tumor effects of 13-acetoxysarcocrassolide isolated from Formosan soft coral Sarcophyton crassocaule on bladder cancer cells were examined in this study. An MTT assay showed that 13-acetoxysarcocrassolide was cytotoxic to bladder female transitional cancer (BFTC) cells. We determined that the BFTC cells underwent cell death through apoptosis by flow cytometry. Due to the highly-migratory nature of the BFTC cells, the ability of 13-acetoxysarcocrassolide to stop their migration was assessed by a wound healing assay. To determine which proteins were affected in the BFTC cells upon treatment, a comparative proteomic analysis was performed. By LC-MS/MS analysis, we identified that 19 proteins were up-regulated and eight were down-regulated. Seven of the proteins were confirmed by western blotting analysis. This study reveals clues to the potential mechanism of the cytotoxic effects of 13-acetoxysarcocrassolide on BFTC cells. Moreover, it suggests that PPT1 and hnRNP F could be new biomarkers for bladder cancer. The results of this study are also helpful for the diagnosis, progression monitoring and therapeutic strategies of transitional cell tumors