Sustainable Community Redevelopment: A Plan for Detroit's Lower Eastside

In the city of Detroit, decades of discrimination, unrest, and disinvestment have left scores of vacant and abandoned property and thousands of impoverished residents. This is clearly apparent in Detroit’s lower eastside, located just inside the city limits and bordered by affluent suburban Grosse Pointe Park. Here, in the heart of the lower eastside, the Jefferson East Business Association (JEBA) works to restore economic vitality as a means of revitalizing the overall conditions of the neighborhood. To aid JEBA in their strategic planning process, we developed a replicable model of sustainable community redevelopment and delivered a set of tailored suggestions for the lower eastside. Our research began with a review of national case studies relevant to six core topic areas critical to redevelopment: Economic Prosperity, Human Health & Well-Being, Vibrant Communities, Energy Systems, Material & Resource Flows, and Ecosystem Services. Through the course of our research, common principles emerged and informed the creation of the sixstep REPAIR model for sustainable community redevelopment. In this report, we demonstrate the model through application to the lower eastside, provide our resulting assessment of the neighborhood, and suggest detailed next steps for JEBA and the community. While specific guidance is provided for Detroit, the key findings are universal: First, a data-driven approach is essential in guiding proper resource usage and investment. Second, there is often a plethora of organizations working for the betterment of hard-hit urban areas. It is essential that these disparate stakeholders collaborate on a common plan to avoid redundancy and while accelerating community redevelopment. Stakeholders must rally behind a strong leader to most effectively assemble crucial resources and increase the likelihood of success. Third, a truly sustainable community will need to prepare for future challenges through mitigation and adaptation strategies. These methods must be established to increase resilience and realize true sustainably. We highlight a process of continual improvement in which metrics and indicators are regularly checked for both changes in trends and continued relevancy.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69234/1/SCR-Paper.pd

Community Benefit Agreements: A Report for the City of East Cleveland

Dr. Beth Nagy, Assistant Lecturer of Urban Planning Practice at the Levin College, worked with her UST 489 Senior Seminar class to produce a report for the City of East Cleveland on community benefit agreements (CBAs). Students examined CBAs across major cities throughout the United States to provide the City of East Cleveland with case studies on the different ways CBAs are utilized in other communities, while exploring the successes and limitations such efforts have encountered. The final report was presented to East Cleveland Mayor Brandon L. King in February 2020

Monitoring Oregon Coastal Harmful Algae: Observations and implications of a harmful algal bloom-monitoring project

The accumulation of domoic acid (DA) and saxitoxins (STX), phycotoxins produced by some species of Pseudo-nitzschia and Alexandrium, respectively, in coastal food webs are a focus of research on the West Coast of the United States due to the deleterious effects they have on coastal ecosystems and economies. Results are presented from the 2007–2012 Monitoring Oregon Coastal Harmful Algae (MOCHA) project, the Oregon coast's first HAB monitoring and research program. Both historical toxin databases and more detailed case-study observations of individual HAB events are compiled to provide the first detailed overview of HAB occurrence in this region. These results are also presented in the context of informing future HAB monitoring in this and other upwelling regimes affected by STX and DA. A 2009–2010 warming event was associated with the greatest HAB activity during the MOCHA project, including anomalously high sea surface temperatures and shellfish harvesting closures due to STX and DA in 2009 and 2010, respectively. In regards to HAB monitoring, it is shown that (1) razor clams are a more sensitive indicator of DA than mussels; (2) water column concentrations of particulate domoic acid greater than 10³ng L⁻¹ can be used as a threshold for early-warning of shellfish DA toxicity and (3) approximately bi-weekly, or shorter, monitoring of Alexandrium in the surf zone and/or offshore can provide advance notice of STX contamination of shellfish. Both of the latter two metrics gain added value when coupled with local wind stress, a proxy of downwelling/relaxation events that facilitate greater interaction between offshore blooms and shellfish.Keywords: Oregon coast, Saxitoxin, Domoic acid, Alexandrium, Harmful algal bloom, Pseudo-nitzschi

Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV: Mapping the Milky Way, Nearby Galaxies, and the Distant Universe

We describe the Sloan Digital Sky Survey IV (SDSS-IV), a project encompassing three major spectroscopic programs. The Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment 2 (APOGEE-2) is observing hundreds of thousands of Milky Way stars at high resolution and high signal-to-noise ratios in the near-infrared. The Mapping Nearby Galaxies at Apache Point Observatory (MaNGA) survey is obtaining spatially resolved spectroscopy for thousands of nearby galaxies (median $z\sim 0.03$). The extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS) is mapping the galaxy, quasar, and neutral gas distributions between $z\sim 0.6$ and 3.5 to constrain cosmology using baryon acoustic oscillations, redshift space distortions, and the shape of the power spectrum. Within eBOSS, we are conducting two major subprograms: the SPectroscopic IDentification of eROSITA Sources (SPIDERS), investigating X-ray AGNs and galaxies in X-ray clusters, and the Time Domain Spectroscopic Survey (TDSS), obtaining spectra of variable sources. All programs use the 2.5 m Sloan Foundation Telescope at the Apache Point Observatory; observations there began in Summer 2014. APOGEE-2 also operates a second near-infrared spectrograph at the 2.5 m du Pont Telescope at Las Campanas Observatory, with observations beginning in early 2017. Observations at both facilities are scheduled to continue through 2020. In keeping with previous SDSS policy, SDSS-IV provides regularly scheduled public data releases; the first one, Data Release 13, was made available in 2016 July

An Adoption Framework for Mobile Augmented Reality Games: The Case of Pokémon Go

Pokémon Go was the first mobile augmented reality (AR) game to reach the top of the download charts of mobile applications. However, little is known about this new generation of mobile online AR games. Existing theories provide limited applicability for user understanding. Against this background, this research provides a comprehensive framework based on uses and gratification theory, technology risk research, and flow theory. The proposed framework aims to explain the drivers of attitudinal and intentional reactions, such as continuance in gaming or willingness to invest money in in-app purchases. A survey among 642 Pokémon Go players provides insights into the psychological drivers of mobile AR games. The results show that hedonic, emotional, and social benefits and social norms drive consumer reactions while physical risks (but not data privacy risks) hinder consumer reactions. However, the importance of these drivers differs depending on the form of user behavior

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Modelling human choices: MADeM and decision‑making

Research supported by FAPESP 2015/50122-0 and DFG-GRTK 1740/2. RP and AR are also part of the Research, Innovation and Dissemination Center for Neuromathematics FAPESP grant (2013/07699-0). RP is supported by a FAPESP scholarship (2013/25667-8). ACR is partially supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)