The Economic Impacts of Nuclear Power Plant Closures on Rural Communities

The 2015 announcement to close Indian Point Energy Center (IPEC) in Buchanan, NY caused a shockwave of concerns for the local community. As a rural community, Buchanan, NY relies on major employers to provide long-lasting careers with steady incomes and steady tax revenue for the community (Mitchell, 2019). A major employer is a business that produces more goods and services than can be utilized by the local economy, and therefore it exports a significant portion of its goods and employs five hundred workers or more (Montrose EDC, 2019). The type of industries that are major employers includes manufacturing, energy plants, hospitals, schools, automobile plants, etc. As a nuclear power plant, IPEC provides various economic benefits to the local community such as; approximately half of Buchanan’s operating budget ($4 million), 5,300 local jobs from direct and indirect sources,$25 million in annual school taxes, etc. (Moore, 2018; NEI, 2015; Pezzullo, 2020). This research attempted to gain a better understanding of how major employer closures impact the community, and how a community can battle those impacts with a specific focus on the closure of nuclear power plants in rural communities. By understanding how the closure can impact the community, policy recommendations could be formulated to lessen the negative economic impacts. Previous research has shown a nuclear power plant closure can cause short-term economic distress as a community transitions, but long-term economic distress is unlikely (Greco & Yamato, 2019; Haller, 2014: Haller, et al., 2017; Kotval & Mullin, 1997). This study used a multiple case study to gather information on previous nuclear power plant closures in other U.S. rural communities and compared the impacts with the predicted impacts from the closure of IPEC to formulate policy recommendations. It was concluded, rural communities can survive the economic impacts of a nuclear power plant closure through the use of various public programs and policies as well as the collaboration between company and government

The Benefits of Mindfulness for University Students

Background: Mindfulness training is increasingly being adopted to address mental health concerns among university students (Kuyken et al., 2017). Previous research has supported mindfulness with empirical evidence as an autonomous, accessible, and cost-effective intervention for stress and anxiety (Flett, Conner, Rordan, Patterson, & Hayne, 2020).Aim: The purpose of this study was (1) to examine the prevalence of student stress and anxiety alongside student mindfulness interest and experience; (2) to examine the benefits of mindfulness training through the perspectives of cognitive neuroscience, population health, and behavioral economics; and (3) to examine the cost-effectiveness of mindfulness training for university students.Methods: To address these aims, an anonymous online survey incorporating both the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) and the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) was administered to students at a liberal arts university in New England to quantify the prevalence of student stress and mindfulness. It was hypothesized that scores on the PSS would be inversely correlated with scores on the FFMQ .Results: The results demonstrated a significant negative correlation between FFMQ and PSS scores, r (107) = -.507, p < 0.01.Conclusion: The implications of this study are beneficial in establishing mindfulness training as an effective and cost-effective approach to promoting mental health in students. The study concluded with a data-informed recommendation for educational strategy based upon survey and research findings

Users\u27 experiences of wearable activity trackers: A cross-sectional study

Background Wearable activity trackers offer considerable promise for helping users to adopt healthier lifestyles. This study aimed to explore users’ experience of activity trackers, including usage patterns, sharing of data to social media, perceived behaviour change (physical activity, diet and sleep), and technical issues/barriers to use. Methods A cross-sectional online survey was developed and administered to Australian adults who were current or former activity tracker users. Results were analysed descriptively, with differences between current and former users and wearable brands explored using independent samples t-tests, Mann-Whitney, and chi square tests. Results Participants included 200 current and 37 former activity tracker users (total N = 237) with a mean age of 33.1 years (SD 12.4, range 18–74 years). Fitbit (67.5%) and Garmin devices (16.5%) were most commonly reported. Participants typically used their trackers for sustained periods (5–7 months) and most intended to continue usage. Participants reported they had improved their physical activity (51–81%) more commonly than they had their diet (14–40%) or sleep (11–24%), and slightly more participants reported to value the real time feedback (89%) compared to the long-term monitoring (78%). Most users (70%) reported they had experienced functionality issues with their devices, most commonly related to battery life and technical difficulties. Conclusions Results suggest users find activity trackers appealing and useful tools for increasing perceived physical activity levels over a sustained period

Detection and localisation of unilateral hindlimb pathologies in cattle using the cow pedogram.

ISSN:0042-490

Sigma1 Targeting to Suppress Aberrant Androgen Receptor Signaling in Prostate Cancer.

Suppression of androgen receptor (AR) activity in prostate cancer by androgen depletion or direct AR antagonist treatment, although initially effective, leads to incurable castration-resistant prostate cancer (CRPC) via compensatory mechanisms including resurgence of AR and AR splice variant (ARV) signaling. Emerging evidence suggests that Sigma1 (also known as sigma-1 receptor) is a unique chaperone or scaffolding protein that contributes to cellular protein homeostasis. We reported previously that some Sigma1-selective small molecules can be used to pharmacologically modulate protein homeostasis pathways. We hypothesized that these Sigma1-mediated responses could be exploited to suppress AR protein levels and activity. Here we demonstrate that treatment with a small-molecule Sigma1 inhibitor prevented 5α- dihydrotestosterone-mediated nuclear translocation of AR and induced proteasomal degradation of AR and ARV, suppressing the transcriptional activity and protein levels of both full-length and splice-variant AR. Consistent with these data, RNAi knockdown of Sigma1 resulted in decreased AR levels and transcriptional activity. Furthermore, Sigma1 physically associated with ARV7 and A

Probing shock geometry via the charge to mass ratio dependence of heavy ion spectra from multiple spacecraft observations of the 2013 November 4 event

In large Solar Energetic Particle (SEP) events, ions can be accelerated at coronal mass ejection (CME)-driven shocks to very high energies. The spectra of heavy ions in many large SEP events show features such as roll-overs or spectral breaks. In some events when the spectra are plotted in terms of energy/nucleon, they can be shifted relative to each other to make the spectral breaks align. The amount of shift is charge to mass ratio (Q/A) dependent and varies from event to event. This can be understood if the spectra of heavy ions are organized by the diffusion coefficients (Cohen et al. 2005). In the work of Li et al. (2009), the Q/A dependence of the scaling is related to shock geometry when the CME-driven shock is close to the Sun. For events where multiple in-situ spacecraft observations exist, one may expect that different spacecraft are connected to different portions of the CME-driven shock that have different shock geometries, therefore yielding different Q/A dependence. In this work, we examine one SEP event which occurred on 2013 November 4. We study the Q/A dependence of the energy scaling for heavy ion spectra using helium, oxygen and iron ions. Observations from STEREO-A, STEREO-B and ACE are examined. We find that the scalings are different for different spacecraft. We suggest that this is because ACE, STEREO-A and STEREO-B are connected to different parts of the shock that have different shock geometries. Our analysis indicates that studying the Q/A scaling of in-situ particle spectra can serve as a powerful tool to remotely examine the shock geometry for large SEP events