Into the fray: a call for policy-engaged and actionable environmental humanities

As European countries strive to meet their targets in support of the Paris Agreement on Climate Change and the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by UN member states in 2015, the importance of integrating all knowledge communities in coordinated responses to sustainability challenges becomes an increasing priority. The creativity and depth of knowledge within philosophical, cultural, aesthetic and historical disciplines of the humanities has been underutilized in coordinated international assessment initiatives that aim to inform policy and facilitate solutions of sustainability governance. The Environmental Humanities (EH) is a field of growing significance internationally. While it can no longer be called an emerging field, EH still holds only the promise of bringing knowledge of social and cultural systems to coordinated international efforts to address the human dimensions of global environmental change. The significant knowledge and expertise on the human dimensions of environmental change available within the EH field should be regarded as an indispensable resource to policymakers and to those on the ground who work to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. This essay makes a case for actionable, policy-engaged environmental humanities, an ambition that should certainly extend to the domain of the humanities more generally.A medida que los países europeos se esfuerzan por cumplir sus objetivos para apoyar el Acuerdo de París sobre el Cambio Climático y los 17 Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible adoptados por los estados miembros de la ONU en 2015, la importancia de integrar a todas las comunidades de conocimiento en sus respuestas coordinadas a los desafíos de sostenibilidad se convierte en una prioridad cada vez mayor. La creatividad y la profundidad del conocimiento dentro de las disciplinas filosóficas, culturales, estéticas e históricas de las humanidades no se han aprovechado lo suficiente en las iniciativas coordinadas de evaluación internacional que tienen como objetivo informar las políticas y facilitar soluciones de sostenibilidad para los gobiernos del mundo. Las Humanidades Ambientales (HA) son un campo de creciente importancia a nivel internacional. Si bien, ya no se le puede llamar un campo emergente, todavía se presenta solamente como campo promisorio pero capaz de contribuir con su conocimiento de los sistemas sociales y culturales a los esfuerzos internacionales coordinados para abordar las dimensiones humanas del cambio medioambiental global. El conocimiento y pericia significativos dentro del campo de las HA sobre las dimensiones humanas del cambio ambiental deberían considerarse un recurso indispensable para los legisladores y para aquellos que trabajan en el terreno con miras a alcanzar los Objetivos de Desarrollo Sostenible. Este ensayo presenta argumentos a favor de las humanidades medioambientales factibles y comprometidas con las políticas, una ambición que ciertamente debería extenderse al campo de las humanidades en general

Technology coordination

Viewgraphs on technology coordination are provided. Topics covered include: technology coordination process to date; goals; how the Office of Aeronautics and Space Technology (OAST) can support the Office of Space Science and Applications (OSSA); how OSSA can support OAST; steps to technology transfer; and recommendations

University program

Information on university programs, program growth, and space research and technology strategy, are given in viewgraph form

Changes in childhood malnutrition and mortality after institution of a Community Health Worker program in four rural Guatemalan villages

While community health workers (CHWs) are being implemented in several developing countries, there has been little work done to evaluate their effectiveness in reducing childhood malnutrition among participating communities. Our study evaluates the effectiveness of CHWs in three Guatemalan villages by comparing anthropomorphic measures and mortality rates of children under five before and after the implementation of a CHW program. While one community showed no significant change in malnutrition rates in terms of height-for-age calculations, two other communities showed improved malnutrition rates in terms of height-for-age. Weight-for-age comparisons were not statistically significant, and while childhood mortality remained unchanged in one community, there was a 5% improvement in childhood mortality for the other communities combined

First-principles Studies of Anion Engineering in Functional Ceramics

Ceramic materials display a wide variety of valuable properties, such as ferroelectricity, superconductivity, and magnetic ordering, due to the partially covalent bonds which connect the cations and anions. While many breakthroughs have been made by mixing multiple cations on a sublattice, the equivalent mixed-anion ceramics have not received nearly as much attention, despite the key role the anion plays in the materials’ properties. There is great potential for functional ceramics design using anion engineering, which aims to tune the materials properties by adding and removing different types of anions in existing classes of ceramic materials. In this dissertation, I present our theoretical studies, — supplemented by experiments, where available, — of : 1) oxygen vacancies in superconducting oxides, 2) oxyfluorides to achieve multiferroic materials, 3) oxynitrides-based ferroelectric semiconductors, and 4) electride-based materials predicted to serve as promising fluorine-ion intercalation batteries. First, I will set the stage by describing the functions which we seek to gain or improve by anion engineering, and the theoretical methods which we use to predict improved materials. The first topic is the crystal site preference of oxygen vacancies in the high-temperature superconductor YBa2Cu3O7-x (YBCO). We find that it is favorable to form a small concentration of apical oxygen vacancies, in addition to the well-studied vacancies in the Cu-O chains. I will also show new experimental evidence that this apical vacancy occurs frequently under some conditions. Next, I describe our research on transition metal oxyfluoride perovskites. We predict that low-temperature fluorination of anion-deficient iron and manganese oxides can lead to multiferroic compounds with simultaneous ferroelectric and magnetic ordering. In the third topic, we employ a similar strategy of anion substitution to search for ABO2N semiconductors, where B is a p-block element. We propose a new class of stable tin oxynitrides-based ferroelectric semiconductors. These oxynitrides have tunable bandgaps across the entire visible spectrum, in addition to light electron effective masses which are expected to promote electrical conductivity. The new materials are also non-centrosymmetric, with a large polarization which may lead to switchable ferroelectricity. Finally, I will examine a new family of fluoronitrides and fluorocarbides that we predict to serve as fluorine-ion intercalation electrodes for use in high-capacity batteries. These materials utilize the unique chemistry of electrides to achieve excellent voltage and diffusion kinetics. Together, these examples demonstrate the power of anion engineering to create new functional ceramics with desirable properties

The Color-Period Diagram and Stellar Rotational Evolution - New Rotation Period Measurements in the Open Cluster M34

We present results from a 5-month photometric survey for stellar rotation periods combined with a 4-year radial-velocity survey for membership and binarity in the 220Myr open cluster M34. We report surface rotation periods for 120 stars, 83 of which are late-type cluster members. A comparison to previous work serves to illustrate the importance of high cadence long baseline photometric observations and membership information. The new M34 periods are less biased against slow rotation and cleaned for non-members. The rotation periods of the cluster members span more than an order of magnitude from 0.5 day up to 11.5 days, and trace two distinct rotational sequences - fast (C) and moderate-to-slow (I) - in the color-period diagram. The sequences represent two different states in the rotational evolution of the late-type cluster members. We use the color-period diagrams for M34 and for younger and older clusters to estimate the timescale for the transition from the C to the I sequence and find ~<150Myr, ~150-300Myr, and ~300-600Myr for G, early-mid K, and late K dwarfs, respectively. The small number of stars in the gap between C and I suggest a quick transition. We estimate a lower limit on the maximum spin-down rate (dP/dt) during this transition to be ~0.06 days/Myr and ~0.08 days/Myr for early and late K dwarfs, respectively. We compare the I sequence rotation periods in M34 and the Hyades for G and K dwarfs and find that K dwarfs spin down slower than the Skumanich rate. We determine a gyrochronology age of 240Myr for M34. We measure the effect of cluster age uncertainties on the gyrochronology age for M34 and find the resulting error to be consistent with the error estimate for the technique. We use the M34 I sequence to redetermine the coefficients in the expression for rotational dependence on color used in gyrochronology (abridged).Comment: 47 pages (12pt, preprint), 14 figures, 2 tables, Accepted for publication in ApJ, format of RA coordinates in Table 2 corrected in latest versio

Mammalian Cell Cytotoxicity Analysis of Soybean Rust Fungicides

The identification of soybean rust, caused by Phakopsora pachyrhizi H. Sydow & Sydow, in the southern United States in November 2004 (Schneider et al. 2005 ), in the Midwest in 2006 (Hartman et al. 2007 ), and elsewhere has increased the concerns of the impact of the pathogen on US soybean production (Miles et al. 2007 ). The rapid spread of P. pachyrhizi and its potential to cause severe yield losses makes this among the most destructive foliar diseases of soybean. Yield losses of 20%–60% were reported in Asia, with losses of 80% reported from experimental plots in Taiwan (Hartman et al. 1991 ). Soybean rust could have a major impact on both total soybean production and production costs in the US

Mammalian Cell Cytotoxicity Analysis of Soybean Rust Fungicides

The identification of soybean rust, caused by Phakopsora pachyrhizi H. Sydow & Sydow, in the southern United States in November 2004 (Schneider et al. 2005 ), in the Midwest in 2006 (Hartman et al. 2007 ), and elsewhere has increased the concerns of the impact of the pathogen on US soybean production (Miles et al. 2007 ). The rapid spread of P. pachyrhizi and its potential to cause severe yield losses makes this among the most destructive foliar diseases of soybean. Yield losses of 20%–60% were reported in Asia, with losses of 80% reported from experimental plots in Taiwan (Hartman et al. 1991 ). Soybean rust could have a major impact on both total soybean production and production costs in the US