SB 115: California\u27s Response to Environmental Justice - Process Over Substance

This article discusses California’s development of an institutional framework for addressing environmental justice through the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (“OPR”) and the California Environmental Protection Agency (“Cal/EPA”). It will demonstrate the ways these agencies’ foci have been on coordination as well as formulating guidelines. Further, the article’s purpose is to point out that while these guidelines provide important tools for environmental justice advocates, they do not provide any substantive guarantees that disproportionate impacts will not occur in communities of color and low income populations

Is renewable power reaching the people and are the people reaching the power? Creating a just transition from the ground-up

Presented at the Environmental justice in the Anthropocene symposium held on April 24-25, 2017 at the Lory Student Center, Colorado State University, Fort Collins Colorado. This symposium aims to bring together academics (faculty and graduate students), independent researchers, community and movement activists, and regulatory and policy practitioners from across disciplines, research areas, perspectives, and different countries. Our overarching goal is to build on several decades of EJ research and practice to address the seemingly intractable environmental and ecological problems of this unfolding era. How can we explore EJ amongst humans and between nature and humans, within and across generations, in an age when humans dominate the landscape? How can we better understand collective human dominance without obscuring continuing power differentials and inequities within and between human societies? What institutional and governance innovations can we adopt to address existing challenges and to promote just transitions and futures?Includes bibliographical references.This article will examine how the Center on Race, Poverty & the Environment (CRPE) and the residents we work with are planning a Just Transition in the historic heart of California's oil and gas industry. Like many extractive-based economies, the oil and gas industry has created dependence and cycles of poverty. Tied to oil and gas for its economic growth, yet overburdened by its pollution, California reflects the paradox facing many extractive economies around the world. The article will discuss how state climate policies and targeted private investment can be implemented at the local level to improve community health, build community wealth, and create accountable governance systems that benefit low-income communities and communities of color. We will begin by discussing the Environmental Justice's Movements definition of a Just Transition. We will also discuss how California's climate policy has evolved over the last few years to incorporate elements of a Just Transition Framework. Finally, the article will discuss the case study of Arvin, CA, a low-income Latino community in the heart of the oil and gas industry we are working with to plan a project to become 100% fossil fuel free

Structural Racism, Structural Pollution and the Need for a New Paradigm

Any serious attempt to address the issues of poverty, wealth and the working poor would do well to learn from the Environmental Justice movement, a broad-based national social movement that has emerged from the ground up over the past twenty years. The movement operates at the intersection of race, poverty and the environment, and offers hope in an otherwise bleak landscape of environmental and social justice advocacy. The movement offers a new paradigm for community leadership and control. This Essay explores the need for that new paradigm, using one community’s struggle against toxic intrusion to illustrate the failure of the traditional paradigms of environmental and civil rights law. The experiences of residents of the Waterfront South neighborhood of Camden, New Jersey, demonstrate the need to address the structural nature of both pollution and racism, and we offer an environmental justice approach as a start

Substrate Concentration Influences Effective Radial Diffusion Coefficient in Canine Cortical Bone

Transport of nutrients and waste across osseous tissue is dependent on the dynamic micro and macrostructure of the tissue; however little quantitative data exists examining how this transport occurs across the entire tissue. Here we investigate in vitro radial diffusion across a section of canine tissue, at dimensions of several hundred microns to millimeters, specifically between several osteons connected through a porous microstructure of Volkmann\u27s canals and canaliculi. The effective diffusion coefficient is measured by a sample immersion technique presented here, in which the tissue sample was immersed in solution for 18-30 h, image analysis software was used to quantify the solute concentration profile in the tissue, and the data were fit to a mathematical model of diffusion in the tissue. Measurements of the effective diffusivity of sodium fluorescein using this technique were confirmed using a standard two-chamber diffusion system. As the solute concentration increased, the effective diffusivity decreased, ranging from 1.6 x 10(-7) +/- A 3.2 x 10(-8) cm(2)/s at 0.3 mu M to 1.4 x 10(-8) +/- A 1.9 x 10(-9) cm(2)/s at 300 mu M. The results show that there is no significant difference in mean diffusivity obtained using the two measurement techniques on the same sample, 3.3 x 10(-8) +/- A 3.3 x 10(-9) cm(2)/s (sample immersion), compared to 4.4 x 10(-8) +/- A 1.1 x 10(-8) cm(2)/s (diffusion chamber)

Cerebrospinal Fluid Cytokines and Neurodegeneration-Associated Proteins in Parkinson's Disease.

INTRODUCTION: Immune markers are altered in Parkinson's disease (PD), but relationships between cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and plasma cytokines and associations with neurodegeneration-associated proteins remain unclear. METHODS: CSF and plasma samples and demographic/clinical measures were obtained from 35 PD patients. CSF samples were analyzed for cytokines (together with plasma) and for α-synuclein, amyloid β(1-42) peptide, total tau, and phospho(Thr231)-tau. RESULTS: There were no CSF-plasma cytokine correlations. Interleukin (IL)-8 was higher and interferon-γ, IL-10, and tumor necrosis factor-α were lower in CSF versus plasma. In CSF, total tau correlated positively with IL-8 and IL-1β, whereas α-synuclein correlated positively with amyloid β(1-42) and negatively with semantic fluency (a known marker of PD dementia risk). DISCUSSION: CSF and peripheral cytokine profiles in PD are not closely related. Associations between CSF IL-8 and IL-1β and tau suggest that CSF inflammatory changes may relate to tau pathology within PD. CSF α-synuclein/amyloid β may reflect the risk of developing PD dementia. © 2020 The Authors. Movement Disorders published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.Funding for this work was provided by the Rosetrees Trust (M369-F1), Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (PF15/CWG) and the NIHR Cambridge Biomedical Research Centre Dementia and Neurodegeneration Theme (146281). RSW was supported by a Fellowship from Addenbrooke’s Charitable Trust (RG77199). SFM was supported by the Transeuro EU FP7 grant (242003) and is now an NIHR Academic Clinical Fellow (ACF-2015-23-501). DPB is supported by a Wellcome Trust Clinical Research Career Development Fellowship. RAB is an NIHR Senior Investigator (NF-SI-0616-10011) and is supported by the Wellcome Trust-MRC Cambridge Stem Cell Institute. CHWG holds a RCUK/UKRI Research Innovation Fellowship awarded by the Medical Research Council (MR/R007446/1) and receives support from the Cambridge Centre for Parkinson-Plus

Emergency Water Station Final Design Report

The following objectives were presented to the Emergency Water Station Group to create a station to aid South Texas Human Rights Center volunteers in providing water for dehydrated refugees: The system must sustain power to controllers, an LED, and a phone charger continuously The system should monitor GPS coordinates and the number of water jugs present in the station and upload this data to a website automatically The system should include a base to house the electronics and medical supplies, and also support a 27.5-ft flagpole while keeping all compartments watertight through common weather conditions This report outlines the logistics of the created system as well as the tests conducted to evaluate its effectiveness. The waterproofing tests concluded that seals on the electrical drawer, USB cover, and load cells successfully impeded water from entering any electrical compartments. The flagpole tests also proved successful because there was no plastic deformation, no base tipping, and no base roof shearing. Phone charger tests proved that the charger could successfully power three different phone brands. Weight sensor tests showed low drifting with temperature variations from 15 to 45 degrees Celsius and extended amounts of time. Similarly, the power system tests verified that the entire system was self sustaining for three days. Current tests showed little variation; however, there was significant noise present in the battery voltage readings. The communication system successfully transmitted the barrel weight and location of the station to the website over a full system test of three days. It is recommended to improve the voltage reader to ensure more reliability and accuracy. There was drifting in the time readings for the Real Time Clock (RTC), which could be prevented using the Adafruit DS3231 RTC. It is also recommended that the satellite data sensing be optimized using an algorithm. Ideally, with further testing and research the entire system could operate without the need for a master Raspberry Pi, as it currently works as a middle-man for the communications system to collect data from all stations

Talking with Technology Camp: A Collaboration with Children\u27s Hospital Colorado

Talking with Technology Camp is a one-week, intensive program developed by Children\u27s Hospital Colorado for children who use augmentative and alternative communication devices as their primary means of expressive communication. Each summer, graduate students from the University of Northern Colorado - speech-language pathology program apply for the opportunity to grow their clinical skills alongside speech-language pathologists from Children\u27s Hospital Colorado. During the summer of 2019, 8 graduate students and 2 undergraduate students participated in this program to provide intervention to children with significant communication needs

A systematic review of the prevalence of comorbid cancer and dementia and its implications for cancer-related care

Objectives: A comorbid diagnosis of cancer and dementia (cancer-dementia) may have uniqueimplications for patient cancer-related experience. The objectives were to estimate prevalence ofcancer-dementia and related experiences of people with dementia, their carers and cancer cliniciansincluding cancer screening, diagnosis, treatment and palliative care. Method: Databases weresearched (CINAHL, Psychinfo, Medline, Embase, BNI) using key terms such as dementia, cancer andexperience. Inclusion criteria were: a) English language, b) published any time until early 2016, c)diagnosis of cancer-dementia and d) original articles that assessed prevalence and/or cancer-relatedexperiences including screening, cancer treatment and survival. Due to variations in study design andoutcomes, study data were synthesized narratively. Results: Forty-seven studies were included in thereview with a mix of quantitative (n = 44) and qualitative (n = 3) methodologies. Thirty-four studiesreported varied cancer-dementia prevalence rates (range 0.2-45.6%); the others reported reducedlikelihood of receiving: cancer screening, cancer staging information, cancer treatment with curativeintent and pain management, compared to those with cancer only. The findings indicate poorercancer-related clinical outcomes including late diagnosis and higher mortality rates in those withcancer-dementia despite greater health service use. Conclusions: There is a dearth of good qualityevidence investigating the cancer-dementia prevalence and its implications for successful cancertreatment. Findings suggest that dementia is associated with poorer cancer outcomes although thereasons for this are not yet clear. Further research is needed to better understand the impact of cancerdementiaand enable patients, carers and clinicians to make informed cancer-related decisions

Rationing Limited Healthcare Resources in the COVID‐19 Era and Beyond: Ethical Considerations Regarding Older Adults

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155955/1/jgs16539_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155955/2/jgs16539.pd