The Role of Public Art in Solar Commons Institution-Building: Community Voices from an Essential Partnership among Artists, Community Solar Researchers, and Activists

In this urgent decade when American democracy faces the challenge of decarbonizing the U.S. electric grid and assuring that the economic benefits of our energy transition are equitably shared, many solar energy researchers and activists are searching for new ways to partner with the civic sector. Instead of treating energy users as passive customers, experts understand the importance of engaging community as active decision-makers, beneficiaries, and communicators for a just energy transition. Distributed solar technology offers more democratic potential than small savings on individuals’ electric bills. Energy experts working on the Solar CommonsÔ community solar model at the University of Minnesota are piloting demonstration projects with community partners in Arizona and Minnesota. These solar commons aggregate savings through power purchase agreements that create 25-year peer-governed revenue streams to support mutual aid and reparative justice work in neighborhoods. This article describes a Solar Commons research project in Arizona, with a conversation among the public artists who partnered with the legal research team to co-create communication and peer governance tools that will allow DIY Solar Commons to iterate throughout the US as a new institution in our civic sector. Images of the Solar Commons public art demonstrate how the artists helped expand the vision of solar energy from the iconic individual solar panel to a technology embedded in community justice and in a complex human-more-than-human environment

Alleviating Environmental Health Disparities Through Community Science and Data Integration

Environmental contamination is a fundamental determinant of health and well-being, and when the environment is compromised, vulnerabilities are generated. The complex challenges associated with environmental health and food security are influenced by current and emerging political, social, economic, and environmental contexts. To solve these “wicked” dilemmas, disparate public health surveillance efforts are conducted by local, state, and federal agencies. More recently, citizen/community science (CS) monitoring efforts are providing site-specific data. One of the biggest challenges in using these government datasets, let alone incorporating CS data, for a holistic assessment of environmental exposure is data management and interoperability. To facilitate a more holistic perspective and approach to solution generation, we have developed a method to provide a common data model that will allow environmental health researchers working at different scales and research domains to exchange data and ask new questions. We anticipate that this method will help to address environmental health disparities, which are unjust and avoidable, while ensuring CS datasets are ethically integrated to achieve environmental justice. Specifically, we used a transdisciplinary research framework to develop a methodology to integrate CS data with existing governmental environmental monitoring and social attribute data (vulnerability and resilience variables) that span across 10 different federal and state agencies. A key challenge in integrating such different datasets is the lack of widely adopted ontologies for vulnerability and resiliency factors. In addition to following the best practice of submitting new term requests to existing ontologies to fill gaps, we have also created an application ontology, the Superfund Research Project Data Interface Ontology (SRPDIO)

Southern San Andreas-San Jacinto fault system slip rates estimated from earthquake cycle models constrained by GPS and interferometric synthetic aperture radar observations

We use ground geodetic and interferometric synthetic aperture radar satellite observations across the southern San Andreas (SAF)-San Jacinto (SJF) fault systems to constrain their slip rates and the viscosity structure of the lower crust and upper mantle on the basis of periodic earthquake cycle, Maxwell viscoelastic, finite element models. Key questions for this system are the SAF and SJF slip rates, the slip partitioning between the two main branches of the SJF, and the dip of the SAF. The best-fitting models generally have a high-viscosity lower crust (η = 10^(21) Pa s) overlying a lower-viscosity upper mantle (η = 10^(19) Pa s). We find considerable trade-offs between the relative time into the current earthquake cycle of the San Jacinto fault and the upper mantle viscosity. With reasonable assumptions for the relative time in the earthquake cycle, the partition of slip is fairly robust at around 24–26 mm/a for the San Jacinto fault system and 16–18 mm/a for the San Andreas fault. Models for two subprofiles across the SAF-SJF systems suggest that slip may transfer from the western (Coyote Creek) branch to the eastern (Clark-Superstition hills) branch of the SJF from NW to SE. Across the entire system our best-fitting model gives slip rates of 2 ± 3, 12 ± 9, 12 ± 9, and 17 ± 3 mm/a for the Elsinore, Coyote Creek, Clark, and San Andreas faults, respectively, where the large uncertainties in the slip rates for the SJF branches reflect the large uncertainty in the slip rate partitioning within the SJF system

Role of the ubiquitin proteasome system in hematologic malignancies

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/109768/1/imr12236.pd

Years of Life Lost (before they can ossify)

The forced extraction of raw materials and life forms from the Earth’s biosphere sustains human feats of modernity. From precious metals to fossil fuels, from copper to uranium, and the rare earth minerals essential to modern infrastructure and electronics, the history of mining is deeply rooted in the unfolding sociopolitical climate of the Sonoran Desert. By transforming ore into commodities, corporate mining throughout the Sonoran Desert has been a source of immense wealth for some, but has also led to waste, environmental contamination, illness and premature death in rural, low-income, predominantly communities of color. Years of Life Lost (before they can ossify) is a multimedia art installation that visualizes this toxic aftermath through slag rock, a mining byproduct left behind in massive mounds of waste, and glass bones that both represent the years of life lost by people living near waste due to the harmful chemicals that enter their body without their consent. The promise of industrialization to modernize and improve our lives is contrasted with the reality of the underlying intentions of corporate operations that produce and prioritize value in monetary form while devaluing and harming ecosystems necessary for life and the environmental health of local communities. The state’s supporting role is revealed through a mathematical calculation used in policy decision-making that figures the years of life lost in relation to human productivity and profit. Within the exhibition, the viewer is witness to the political and economic forces that are enmeshed in constellations of flesh, tissue, rock, bone, soil, and precious moments of life that were never lived

Public participation, trust and data sharing: gardens as hubs for citizen science and environmental health literacy efforts

International audienc

Ripple Effect: Communicating Water Quality Data through Sonic Vibrations

Pollution in real time can be incredibly powerful, but is difficult to communicate. Persistent deterioration of land, air, and water are largely invisible to the eye and camera lens. What if water itself could visualize its quality and perform the level of contamination? Ripple Effect is an environmental art installation that reveals water contamination through sonic vibrations and light. Using software technology, water contamination levels are translated into sound waves. The installation consists of speakers that play gdata sound tracks', which vibrate water held in attached trays. Participants see and hear the water vibrate based on contaminant concentrations. This paper describes the concept, data-To-sound process, implementation, and participant evaluation surrounding the installation of Ripple Effect in communities neighboring resource extraction and other industrial activity. While there are many existing artworks that visualize environmental quality, Ripple Effect is novel in its use of local water quality data and interactive technology that allows the primary medium, water, to communicate directly with the participant. © 2021 Owner/Author.National Science Foundation's Division of Research and Learning ð Advancing Informal STEM Learning ProgramOpen access articleThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]