Reevaluation of the Impact of Coal Mining on the Virginia State Budge

Downstream Strategies, an environmental consulting and policy analysis firm, published The Impact of Coal on the Virginia State Budget in 2012, finding that the coal mining industry was responsible for a net cost of 21.9 million USD to the Commonwealth in 2009 (considering only the Virginia General Assembly's General Fund and Transportation Fund revenues and expenditures). We provide a reanalysis of the same topic, considering the effect the presence of the coal industry has on the entire state budget that is not limited to the General Fund. We estimate that in our study year of 2011, the coal industry contributed 31.95 million USD in taxes and fees to the state while the Commonwealth's expenditures relating to the coal industry totaled 24.4 million USD. However, firms producing coal in Virginia also benefit from two exclusive refundable tax credits which we estimate combine to 49.37 million USD. We find that the coal industry was associated with a net cost of 36.7 million USD to the Virginia state budget in 2011

Abundance analysis of a nitrogen-rich extreme-helium hot subdwarf from the SALT survey

We have performed a detailed spectral analysis of the helium-rich hot subdwarf EC 20187-4939 using data obtained in the SALT survey of helium-rich hot subdwarfs. We have measured its effective temperature, surface gravity and chemical abundances from the spectrum. Its radius has also been determined by fitting the spectral energy distribution using photometric data, from which a mass of 0.44 Msun has been inferred using the measurement of surface gravity. This star is particularly abundant in helium and nitrogen, whilst being both carbon and oxygen-weak. The surface abundances and mass have been found to be consistent with a helium white dwarf merger product. The abundance effects of alpha captures on nitrogen during the merger process and possible connections between EC 20187-4939 and other carbon-weak related objects are discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figures, 5 tables, accepted for publication in MNRA

Determining the Hubble Constant without the Sound Horizon: A 3.6%3.6\% Constraint on H0H_0 from Galaxy Surveys, CMB Lensing and Supernovae

Many theoretical resolutions to the so-called "Hubble tension" rely on modifying the sound horizon at recombination, $r_s$, and thus the acoustic scale used as a standard ruler in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and large scale structure (LSS) datasets. As shown in a number of recent works, these observables can also be used to compute $r_s$-independent constraints on $H_0$ by making use of the horizon scale at matter-radiation equality, $k_{\rm eq}$, which has different sensitivity to high redshift physics than $r_s$. In this work, we present the tightest $k_{\rm eq}$-based constraints on the expansion rate from current data, finding $H_0=64.8^{+2.2}_{-2.5}$ at 68$\%$ CL from a combination of BOSS galaxy power spectra, Planck CMB lensing, and the newly released Pantheon+ supernova constraints, as well as physical priors on the baryon density, neutrino mass, and spectral index (in $\mathrm{km}\,\mathrm{s}^{-1}\mathrm{Mpc}^{-1}$ units). The BOSS and Planck measurements have different degeneracy directions, leading to the improved combined constraints, with a bound of $H_0 = 67.1^{+2.5}_{-2.9}$ ($63.6^{+2.9}_{-3.6}$) from BOSS (Planck) alone. The results show some dependence on the neutrino mass bounds, with the constraint broadening to $H_0 = 68.0^{+2.9}_{-3.2}$ if we instead impose a weak prior on $\sum m_\nu$ from terrestrial experiments rather than assuming $\sum m_\nu<0.26\,\mathrm{eV}$, or shifting to $H_0 = 64.6\pm2.4$ if the neutrino mass is fixed to its minimal value. Even without any dependence on the sound horizon, our results are in $\approx 3\sigma$ tension with those obtained from the Cepheid-calibrated distance ladder, providing evidence against new physics models that vary $H_0$ by changing acoustic physics or the expansion history immediately prior to recombination.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.

Coal Mining, Economic Development, and the Natural Resource Curse

Coal mining has a long legacy of providing needed jobs in isolated communities but it is also associated with places that suffer from high poverty and weaker long-term economic growth. Yet, the industry has greatly changed in recent decades. Regulations, first on air, have altered the geography of coal mining, pushing it west from Appalachia. Likewise, technological change has reduced labor demand and has led to relatively new mining practices such as invasive mountain-top approaches. Thus, the economic footprint of coal mining has greatly changed in an era when the industry appears to be on the decline. This study investigates whether these changes along with coal’s “boom/bust” cycles have affected economic prosperity in coal country. We separately examine the Appalachian region from the rest of the U.S. due to Appalachia’s unique history and different mining practices. Our study takes a new look at the industry by assessing the winners and losers of coal development around a range of economic indicators and addressing whether the natural resources curse applies to contemporary American coal communities today. The results suggest that modern coal mining has rather nuanced effects that differ between Appalachia and the rest of the U.S. We do not find strong evidence of a resources curse, except that coal mining has a consistent inverse association with measures linked to population growth and entrepreneurship, and thereby future economic growth

Energy Saving Melting and Revert Reduction (E-SMARRT): Optimization of Heat Treatments on Stainless Steel Castings for Improved Corrosion Resistance and Mechanical Properties

It is commonly believed that high alloy steel castings have inferior corrosion resistance to their wrought counterparts as a result of the increased amount of microsegregation remaining in the as-cast structure. Homogenization and dissolution heat treatments are often utilized to reduce or eliminate the residual microsegregation and dissolve the secondary phases. Detailed electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) and light optical microscopy (LOM) were utilized to correlate the amount of homogenization and dissolution present after various thermal treatments with calculated values and with the resultant corrosion resistance of the alloys.The influence of heat treatment time and temperature on the homogenization and dissolution kinetics were investigated using stainless steel alloys CN3MN and CK3MCuN. The influence of heat treatment time and temperature on the impact toughness and corrosion reistance of cast stainless steel alloys CF-3, CF-3M, CF-8, and CF-8M was also investigated

Procedural justice, compliance with the law and police stop-and-search: a study of young people in England and Scotland

The policing of young people, especially through stop-and-search, has been rigorously debated in the context of rising violence in the UK. While concepts based on procedural justice theory and perceptions of police fairness are directly relevant to these debates, these have rarely been tested on young people, nor have they taken account of the impact of stop-and-search. This paper examines young people’s experiences of stop-and-search in two Scottish and two English cities, and tests the relationship between these experiences, their trust in the police, their perceptions of police legitimacy and their compliance with the law. The study finds that Scottish adolescents, who experienced higher volume stop-and-search, had more negative attitudes to the police and perceived them to be less procedurally fair than English adolescents. Structural equation modelling confirms that principles of procedural justice theory do apply to young people in this UK sample. However, our findings suggest that stop-and-search may damage trust in the police and perceptions of police legitimacy, regardless of the volume of police stop-and-search, and this may result in increased offending behaviour. With ongoing calls to increase the use of stop-and-search in response to recent increases in knife crime in England, we argue that its use needs to be carefully balanced against the, as yet poorly evidenced, benefits of the use of the tactic

Managing pregnancy of unknown location based on initial serum progesterone and serial serum hCG: development and validation of a two-step triage protocol.

A uniform rationalized management protocol for pregnancies of unknown location (PUL) is lacking. We developed a two-step triage protocol based on presenting serum progesterone (step 1) and hCG ratio two days later (step 2) to select PUL at high-risk of ectopic pregnancy (EP).Cohort study of 2753 PUL (301 EP), involving a secondary analysis of prospectively and consecutively collected PUL at two London-based university teaching hospitals. Using a chronological split we used 1449 PUL for development and 1304 for validation. We aimed to select PUL as low-risk with high confidence (high negative predictive value, NPV) while classifying most EP as high-risk (high sensitivity). The first triage step selects low-risk PUL at presentation using a serum progesterone threshold. The remaining PUL are triaged using a novel logistic regression risk model based on hCG ratio and initial serum progesterone (second step), defining low-risk as an estimated EP risk <5%.On validation, initial serum progesterone ≤2nmol/l (step 1) selected 16.1% PUL as low-risk. Second step classification with the risk model M6P selected an additional 46.0% of all PUL as low-risk. Overall, the two-step protocol classified 62.1% of PUL as low-risk, with an NPV of 98.6% and a sensitivity of 92.0%. When the risk model was used in isolation (i.e. without the first step), 60.5% of PUL were classified as low-risk with 99.1% NPV and 94.9% sensitivity.The two-step protocol can efficiently classify PUL into being at high or low risk of complications

Estimated Exposure Risks from Carcinogenic Nitrosamines in Urban Airborne Particulate Matter

Organic nitrogen (ON) compounds are present in atmospheric particulate matter (PM), but compared to their inorganic, hydrocarbon and oxygenated counterparts, they are difficult to characterize due to their complex chemical composition. Nitrosamines are a class of ON compounds known to be highly carcinogenic, and include species formed from nicotine degradation, but there are no detailed estimates of their abundance in ambient air. We use a highly sensitive analytical method, which is capable of separating over 700 ON compounds, to determine daily variability in nicotine, and 8 non specific and 4 tobacco specific nitrosamines in ambient PM from central London over two periods in winter and summer. The average total nitrosamine concentration was 5.2 ng m-3, substantially exceeding a current public recommendation of 0.3 ng m-3 on a daily basis. The lifetime cancer risk from nitrosamines in urban PM exceeded the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency guideline of 1 excess cancer cases per 1 million population exposed after 1 hour of exposure to observed concentrations per day over the duration of an adult lifetime. A clear relationship between ambient nitrosamines and total PM2.5 was observed with 1.2 ng m-3 ± 2.6 ng m-3 (total nitrosamine) per 10 µg m-3 PM2.5