No Californian Left Behind: Clean and Affordable Transportation Options for All Through Vehicle Replacement

As California focuses in on new, high-tech, best-in-class transportation strategies, it risks leaving behind an important subset of households and communities who could most benefit from the transition to a cleaner, cheaper, and more sustainable transportation future. Hundreds of thousands of low-income Californians, particularly those in rural parts of the state, live with some of the worst air pollution in the U.S. They also often drive relatively old, inefficient, unsafe, and highly polluting vehicles, and struggle to cover the costs of their basic transportation needs. For these Californians, getting into a relatively more efficient vehicle is more realistic than getting into a new electric vehicle, which is expensive, or onto public transit, which is often ineffective in serving rural and non-urban households.The state has recognized this problem and attempted to address it by focusing on vehicle repair and retirement programs. However, by merely repairing and retiring vehicles and not replacing them with cleaner, more efficient ones, existing programs do not maximize long-term air benefits or lessen the financial burden these inefficient vehicles currently place on low-income Californians. To help address this issue, Senate Bill 459, signed by Governor Brown in September 2013, directs the California Air Resources Board (ARB) to rewrite the guidelines of California's Enhanced Fleet Modernization Program (EFMP). This program has been in place since 2010, and is designed to allow residents who own the highest-emitting vehicles in the state to retire and/or replace them.In this report, we discuss the contribution made by these highly polluting vehicles to the state's air quality problems; we also discuss the serious drag that driving these vehicles can have on household budgets. After outlining these problems, we discuss the state's current policies aimed at promoting vehicle retirement and replacement and offer some recommendations for improving those programs.California is already a leader in advanced and high-tech transportation and transit solutions. It is time we also became a leader in pragmatic solutions for a population that is sometimes left behind in these discussions: non-urban, low-income, car-dependent households. Bringing solutions to these communities will have a huge impact on our current air quality and family budgets; it will also widen the circle of Californians who play an active part in moving this state toward a cleaner, less oil-dependent future

The changing role of the private family agency: a study of trends at the Brookline Friendly Society from 1943 to 1951.

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Report of Investigations at The Highmore Station for 1903

The work of testing grasses and other forage plants at Highmore during the season of 1903 was carried on by Mr. Sylvester Balz under the direction of Professor De Alton Saunders. The following report of the work has been prepared from the data furnished by Mr. Balz at the close of the season\u27s work. Professor Saunders severed his connection with the South Dakota Agricultural College in October, 1903. There being more land at the station than necessary to carry on the tests of forage plants, a part of it was used by Professor Chilcott and if Mr.Cole in testing macaroni wheats and other grains in co-operation with the United States Department of Agriculture. Their report forms the latter part of this bulletin

Forage Plants and Cereals at the Highmore Sub-Station for 1904-5

The State Agricultural Experiment Station at Highmore, Hyde County, South Dakota, has been in operation for seven years of the location in testing and developing drouth [sic] resistant crops. Hyde County is fairly representative of a large portion of the state from the James River west, which is not well represented by the Brookings Station. The primary purpose of the Highmore Station was to test and develop grasses and forage crops, as it was supposed that this region would be largely a grass country instead of a farming country. Later developments have shown it desirable and in fact necessary to enlarge somewhat upon the work as it was first planned. Co-operative work with the United States Department of Agriculture in the testing of varieties of cereals has been carried on for three years. The report of this work as given by Mr. John S. Cole forms the latter part of this bulletin. The experimental farm at Highmore consists of 117 acres of land. The character of the soil and the lay of the land is somewhat poorer than the average in Hyde County. This, however, is not a disadvantage, for on this account no one can consider the records from the Highmore Station as coming from an unusually good piece of land and, therefore, unreliable for general comparisons

A Look at Risk Attitude: Flight Students Compared to Non-Flight Students

This study delves into a student pilot’s ability to perceive levels of risk compared to non-flight students. A pilot’s ability to assess risks and adequately mitigate or prevent that risk is essential for safe operation. A key principle for safe decision making is the ability to identify and correctly determine the level of risk within a situation. The base of pilot training should give an individual the tools necessary to identify these risks. In order to study the differences in risk attitudes of flight students compared to non-flight students, we administered a survey. Participants were collegiate flight and non-flight students recruited from a four-year university in Florida. All participants were administered the DOSPERT Risk Measurement Test (Blias & Weber, 2006). The DOSPERT Test is comprised of 30 questions on a 7-point Likert type scale ranging from Not at all Risky to Extremely Risky. The questions involve areas including Social, Recreational, Financial, Health, and Ethics. The implications of our study’s results could be used to further understand the differences of risk attitudes of pilots as compared to non-pilots. This study will be generalizable to students in four-year collegiate flight programs or STEM degrees. The data collection is ongoing, and the results will be ready to present by December

Conformal p-branes as a Source of Structure in Spacetime

We discuss a model of a conformal p-brane interacting with the world volume metric and connection. The purpose of the model is to suggest a mechanism by which gravity coupled to p-branes leads to the formation of structure rather than homogeneity in spacetime. Furthermore, we show that the formation of structure is accompanied by the appearance of a multivalued cosmological constant, i.e., one which may take on different values in different domains, or cells, of spacetime. The above results apply to a broad class of non linear gravitational lagrangians as long as metric and connection on the p-brane manifold are treated as independent variables.Comment: 10 pages, ReVTeX, no figure

Alkali metal-refractory metal biphase electrode for AMTEC

An electrode having increased output with slower degradation is formed of a film applied to a beta-alumina solid electrolyte (BASE). The film comprises a refractory first metal M.sup.1 such as a platinum group metal, suitably platinum or rhodium, capable of forming a liquid or a strong surface adsorption phase with sodium at the operating temperature of an alkali metal thermoelectric converter (AMTEC) and a second refractory metal insoluble in sodium or the NaM.sup.1 liquid phase such as a Group IVB, VB or VIB metal, suitably tungsten, molybdenum, tantalum or niobium. The liquid phase or surface film provides fast transport through the electrode while the insoluble refractory metal provides a structural matrix for the electrode during operation. A trilayer structure that is stable and not subject to deadhesion comprises a first, thin layer of tungsten, an intermediate co-deposited layer of tungsten-platinum and a thin surface layer of platinum

Thin metal electrode for AMTEC

An electrode having higher power output is formed of a thin, porous film (less than 1 micrometer) applied to a beta-alumina solid electrolyte (BASE). The electrode includes an open grid, current collector such as a series of thin, parallel, grid lines applied to the thin film and a plurality of cross-members such as loop of metal wire surrounding the BASE tube. The loops are electrically connected by a bus wire. The overall impedance of the electrode considering both the contributions from the bulk BASE and the porous electrode BASE interface is low, about 0.5 OHM/cm.sup.2 and power densities of over 0.3 watt/cm.sup.2 for extended periods

The longitudinal development of emotion regulation capacities in children at risk for externalizing disorders

The development of emotional regulation capacities in children at high versus low risk for externalizing disorder was examined in a longitudinal study investigating: a) whether disturbances in emotion regulation precede and predict the emergence of externalizing symptoms; and b) whether sensitive maternal behavior is a significant influence on the development of child emotion regulation. Families experiencing high (n=58) and low (n=63) levels of psychosocial adversity were recruited to the study during pregnancy. Direct observational assessments of child emotion regulation capacities and maternal sensitivity were completed in early infancy, at 12 and 18-months, and at 5-years. Key findings were as follows. First, high risk children showed poorer emotion regulation capacities than their low risk counterparts at every stage of assessment. Second, from 12-months onwards, emotion regulation capacities showed a degree of stability, and were associated with behavioral problems, both concurrently and prospectively. Third, maternal sensitivity was related to child emotion regulation capacities throughout development, with poorer emotion regulation in the high risk group being associated with lower maternal sensitivity. The results are consistent with a causal role for problems in the regulation of negative emotions in the etiology of externalizing psychopathology, and highlight insensitive parenting as a potentially key developmental influence

Stoichiometry of C, N, P, and Si fluxes in a temperate-climate embayment

Dissolved C, N, P, and Si budgets for Tomales Bay, California, have been used to solve simultaneous stoichiometric equations which describe a plausible material balance for net organic matter reactions in the bay. Dissolved Si and P were both exported hydrographically. Dissolved C and fixed N were imported hydrographically. If we assume that C, N, P, and Si were supplied to the bay as organic detritus and remineralized at a rate required to balance dissolved Si and P exports, we can calculate reasonable rates of denitrification and CO2 gas evasion across the air-water interface. The system is thus interpreted to have been net heterotrophic at the time of our investigation.Fluxes attributed to individual components in the system (benthic respiration, water-column material turnover, biochemical transformations between fixed and gaseous N) were of sufficient magnitude to account for the system-wide net fluxes, although too noisy to allow piecewise derivation of net system fluxes. Denitrification and limitation of primary production by dissolved fixed N in aquatic ecosystems may be symptoms of other system-scale constraints on net C metabolism, rather than themselves being system-level controls of net C metabolism