State Policy Report - Disaster Resilience: 2022 Session Recap

This report identifies trends in state disaster resilience policy among enacted legislation from the 2021-2022 legislative session. Legislative trends are presented by state and region and by 12 categories: Funding, Energy, Communications, Transportation, Safety and Security, Health and Medical, Food and Water, Housing, Hazardous Materials, Land Use, Governance, and Equity. The report discusses and contextualizes findings in greater detail across funding, governance, critical infrastructure, health and human services, and equity. With recent policy emphasis on disaster mitigation, equity, and climate change at the federal level, the report aims to shed light on state-level policy priorities via enacted legislation

Leveraging Sustainability Mindsets in Adult Climate Literacy Training and Education: A Brief Summary of Sustainability Mindsets in the Enhancing Capacity in Adult Climate Literacy (ECACL) Study

Climate change poses significant challenges for emergency management professionals tasked with preparing and adapting communities to its impacts. This study aimed to understand how climate change education can meet the learning needs of emergency management professionals throughout the United States. This exploratory collective case study involved six certified emergency management professionals as key informants, along with a survey distributed to 56 emergency managers. The study initiated an essential needs assessment, combining their knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, and perceptions about climate change with effective engagement in adult learning. The findings carry national and global implications, offering insights into climate literacy programs' design and implementation. The study revealed that most emergency managers feel unprepared for climate impacts, but their sustainability mindsets, such as purpose and mindfulness, are strengths. However, areas for development were identified in long-term thinking, interconnectedness, and embracing both-and thinking and flow in cycles. The research has the potential to equip emergency managers with a deeper understanding of climate literacy, striving for a sustainable and resilient future

Fourteen Months into the Covid-19 Pandemic: What We Miss the Most

As the U.S. continues to emerge from the deadliest pandemic in over one hundred years, vaccination rates among Americans have steadily risen, and public health guidelines that have been in place for over a year are increasingly relaxed. In short, Americans are readjusting to a “new normal.” But what this “new normal” looks like for many Americans remains unclear. To better understand what Americans are most looking forward to, the National Center for Disaster Preparedness (NCDP) at Columbia University’s Earth Institute partnered with the Marist Institute for Public Opinion to survey Americans and better understand what they are most looking forward to doing – or what getting back to ‘normal’ means to them

State Policy Report - Disaster Resilience: 2023 Session Recap

This report identifies trends in state disaster resilience policy among legislation enacted in 2023. Legislative trends are presented by state and region and by 12 categories: Funding, Energy, Communications, Transportation, Safety and Security, Health and Medical, Food and Water, Housing, Hazardous Materials, Land Use, Governance, and Equity. The report discusses and contextualizes findings in greater detail across funding, governance, critical infrastructure, health and human services, and equity. With recent policy emphasis on disaster mitigation, equity, and climate change at the federal level, the report aims to shed light on state-level policy priorities via enacted legislation

RCRC Issue Briefs: Why Children Should Be the #1 Disaster Priority

The Resilient Children/Resilient Communities Initiative (RCRC) Issue Briefs, in this document, are designed to be used by the RCRC communities and all other communities who are seeking to elevate children’s disaster resilience to the attention of local, state, and federal legislators or other decision-makers. These reports can also be used by legislators and decision–makers at all levels of government as informative briefs to better understand the issues faced by communities in disasters within the context of COVID-19 and other disasters. Readers are encouraged to explore topics and voices that most resonate with their own community. To access an online and interactive version of RCRC Issue Briefs, please visit https://rcrctoolbox.org/rcrc-issue-briefs

Informes Temáticos RCRC: Porqué los Niños Deben Ser la Prioridad #1 en Desastres

Los Informes Temáticos RCRC, en este documento, están diseñados para ser utilizados por las comunidades de la iniciativa RCRC y todas las otras comunidades que buscan elevar la resiliencia de los niños ante desastres a la atención de legisladores locales, estatales y federales u otros responsables de la toma de decisiones. Estos informes también pueden ser utilizados por legisladores y responsables de la toma de decisiones en todos los niveles de gobierno como documentos informativos para comprender mejor los problemas que enfrentan las comunidades en desastres en el contexto de COVID-19 y otros desastres. Se anima a los lectores a explorar los temas y mensajes que más resuenan con su propia comunidad. Para acceder a una versión online e interactiva de los Informes Temáticos RCRC, visite https://rcrctoolbox.org/rcrc-issue-briefs-es/

The Democratic Biopolitics of PrEP

PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis) is a relatively new drug-based HIV prevention technique and an important means to lower the HIV risk of gay men who are especially vulnerable to HIV. From the perspective of biopolitics, PrEP inscribes itself in a larger trend of medicalization and the rise of pharmapower. This article reconstructs and evaluates contemporary literature on biopolitical theory as it applies to PrEP, by bringing it in a dialogue with a mapping of the political debate on PrEP. As PrEP changes sexual norms and subjectification, for example condom use and its meaning for gay subjectivity, it is highly contested. The article shows that the debate on PrEP can be best described with the concepts ‘sexual-somatic ethics’ and ‘democratic biopolitics’, which I develop based on the biopolitical approach of Nikolas Rose and Paul Rabinow. In contrast, interpretations of PrEP which are following governmentality studies or Italian Theory amount to either farfetched or trivial positions on PrEP, when seen in light of the political debate. Furthermore, the article is a contribution to the scholarship on gay subjectivity, highlighting how homophobia and homonormativity haunts gay sex even in liberal environments, and how PrEP can serve as an entry point for the destigmatization of gay sexuality and transformation of gay subjectivity. ‘Biopolitical democratization’ entails making explicit how medical technology and health care relates to sexual subjectification and ethics, to strengthen the voice of (potential) PrEP users in health politics, and to renegotiate the profit and power of Big Pharma

Gene content evolution in the arthropods

Arthropods comprise the largest and most diverse phylum on Earth and play vital roles in nearly every ecosystem. Their diversity stems in part from variations on a conserved body plan, resulting from and recorded in adaptive changes in the genome. Dissection of the genomic record of sequence change enables broad questions regarding genome evolution to be addressed, even across hyper-diverse taxa within arthropods. Using 76 whole genome sequences representing 21 orders spanning more than 500 million years of arthropod evolution, we document changes in gene and protein domain content and provide temporal and phylogenetic context for interpreting these innovations. We identify many novel gene families that arose early in the evolution of arthropods and during the diversification of insects into modern orders. We reveal unexpected variation in patterns of DNA methylation across arthropods and examples of gene family and protein domain evolution coincident with the appearance of notable phenotypic and physiological adaptations such as flight, metamorphosis, sociality, and chemoperception. These analyses demonstrate how large-scale comparative genomics can provide broad new insights into the genotype to phenotype map and generate testable hypotheses about the evolution of animal diversity

Framing the future for taxonomic monography: Improving recognition, support, and access

No abstract available