Climate change contributions to conflict: an analysis of Syria, Yemen and Egypt

2021 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Ascriptions of false, causal connections between climate change and conflict sets a dangerous precedent for future refugee migration. Classification of refugees fleeing murderous regimes and/or circumstances, as climate migrants attempting to escape areas impacted climatically, reduces the subjective severity of the actual situations they were fleeing. Potential harmful ramifications to their asylum claims could result, consequential of a reduction in perceived threat to those migrants' lives by Consular officials. It also delegitimizes future climate refugees' asylum claims, those truly fleeing areas devastated by the effects of climate change/variability. Responsible consideration of the latest 2018 IPCC Special Report indicates, absent aggressive greenhouse gas (GHG) abatement measures, these are migrant circumstances that are increasingly likely to manifest. Such false assertions also detract from placing responsibility for the deaths of hundreds of thousands and the displacement of millions where it should be placed: with the Syrian, Yemeni and Egyptian governments. Affirming climate change as the main causal factor that initiated the Syrian conflict allows the regime to shift focus from its own administrative failures that were in fact the largest contribution to a conflict that has witnessed the deaths of hundreds of thousands. Similarly, false attribution of climate effects to Yemen's calamitous situation allows the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, involving famine conditions for millions of Yemenis, to be mistakenly viewed within an environmental context. Deaths and atrocities purportedly resulting from climate phenomena shift responsibility from where it should lay, with the Yemeni conflict's belligerents and their egregious actions. Also, the identification of Egypt's socio and political maladies as primarily consequent of climatic events disallows for the reckoning of the true causes that fomented rebellion during Egypt's Arab Spring "awakening." Finally, such false proclamations inhibit accurate advances to empirical knowledge that could be used in the future towards conflict mitigation and prevention. Implications for future climate refugees and those fleeing violent conflict demand accurate identification of conflict causation. To demand anything less as a member of a global citizenry is a dereliction of one's responsibility to humanity

An Increasingly Negative Outlook: How Income Inequality Affects Personal Consumption Expenditures

This paper analyzes the effects of income inequality on real personal consumption expenditures (RPCE) within the United States. At first glance, income inequality and RPCE have both risen over time. This paper examines whether income inequality actually causes growth in RPCE. We created a time-series model explaining RPCE with six explanatory variables and data spanning 37 years. Using this model, we were able to determine that income inequality has a statistically significant effect on RPCE. This effect becomes increasingly negative when the distribution of income becomes less equal and there is growth in real income. Thus, our results refute the possibility that income inequality has a positive effect on RPCE

Beef Cattle Feeding in a Deep-Bedded Hoop Barn: Year One

A three-year study evaluating the performance of yearling steers in a deep-bedded hoop barn has completed the first year. A 50 × 120 foot hoop barn was constructed at the ISU Armstrong Research Farm in the late fall of 2004. The comparison feedlot is an outside lot with shelter that includes a drive-through feed alley. For the first year of the three-year study, two groups of yearling steers were fed. The first group (Group 1) was put on test August 5, 2005 and marketed on November 15, 2005 for a summer/fall feeding period. The second group (Group 2) was put on test December 21, 2005 and marketed in two drafts on April 4, 2006 and May 10, 2006 for a winter/spring feeding period. Overall the cattle performed similarly with similar carcass data for both housing systems. The information presented is the first year of a three-year study. The cattle had a lower mud score in the hoop barn, particularly for the winter/spring feeding period. As expected the deep-bedded hoop system used more bedding than the semi-confinement lots. The bedded hoop barn required about 5 to 6 lb of cornstalk bedding per head per day that the steers were on feed

Beef Cattle Feeding in a Deep Bedded Hoop Barn: A Preliminary Study

A deep bedded hoop confinement building was constructed at the ISU Armstrong Research Farm in Southwest Iowa in 2004. The building consists of three pens. Shortly after the completion of construction a preliminary study was initiated to compare performance, carcass characteristics, and bedding and labor use to that of a conventional semi-confinement system. The cattle used in this study were steer and heifer calves from the ISU McNay Research Farm. Performance and carcass measurements appeared similar comparing the two systems. However, the hoop building cattle used more bedding and appeared to have lower mud scores. Labor use may have favored the hoop building compared to the conventional system. In 2005, a three year study was initiated to compare the systems with yearling steers. Two turns of yearling cattle will be fed each year, one in summer and one in winter

The Relation Between Interest in Science and Children’s Scientific Thinking in Middle to Late Childhood

This study examined the relation between 9 and 12-year-old children’s interest in science and their scientific thinking skills. Eighty children aged 9 and 12 years and their parents reported their interest in science and children answered epistemological understanding questions and solved scientific reasoning problems during a one-time laboratory visit. In addition, children answered questions concerning their concept of science, their parents’ interest in science, and individual factors related to scientific thinking. During the child’s participation, their parent filled out demographic, academic achievement, and their own interest in science questionnaires. Findings reveal that children’s interest in science and concept of science related to their epistemological understanding, and the relation between children’s interest in science and epistemological understanding is mediated by children’s critical thinking skills. Results further showed that children’s age and academic achievement, but not interest in science, related to their scientific reasoning skills. Other findings revealed that children’s identification with science as an interest was the predominant characteristic of interest to relate to epistemological understanding, and that children’s interest in science related to children’s perception of their mothers as interested in science. These findings are discussed in relation to their implications for further research and educational implementation

Inference of evolutionary jumps in large phylogenies using Lévy processes

Although it is now widely accepted that the rate of phenotypic evolution may not necessarily be constant across large phylogenies, the frequency and phylogenetic position of periods of rapid evolution remain unclear. In his highly influential view of evolution, G. G. Simpson supposed that such evolutionary jumps occur when organisms transition into so-called new adaptive zones, for instance after dispersal into a new geographic area, after rapid climatic changes, or following the appearance of an evolutionary novelty. Only recently, large, accurate and well calibrated phylogenies have become available that allow testing this hypothesis directly, yet inferring evolutionary jumps remains computationally very challenging. Here, we develop a computationally highly efficient algorithm to accurately infer the rate and strength of evolutionary jumps as well as their phylogenetic location. Following previous work we model evolutionary jumps as a compound process, but introduce a novel approach to sample jump configurations that does not require matrix inversions and thus naturally scales to large trees. We then make use of this development to infer evolutionary jumps in Anolis lizards and Loriinii parrots where we find strong signal for such jumps at the basis of clades that transitioned into new adaptive zones, just as postulated by Simpson’s hypothesis