270 research outputs found
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Aligning Community-Engaged Research to Context.
Community-engaged research is understood as existing on a continuum from less to more community engagement, defined by participation and decision-making authority. It has been widely assumed that more is better than less engagement. However, we argue that what makes for good community engagement is not simply the extent but the fit or alignment between the intended approach and the various contexts shaping the research projects. This article draws on case studies from three Community Engagement Cores (CECs) of NIEHS-funded Environmental Health Science Core Centers (Harvard University, UC Davis and University of Arizona,) to illustrate the ways in which community engagement approaches have been fit to different contexts and the successes and challenges experienced in each case. We analyze the processes through which the CECs work with researchers and community leaders to develop place-based community engagement approaches and find that different strategies are called for to fit distinct contexts. We find that alignment of the scale and scope of the environmental health issue and related research project, the capacities and resources of the researchers and community leaders, and the influences of the sociopolitical environment are critical for understanding and designing effective and equitable engagement approaches. These cases demonstrate that the types and degrees of alignment in community-engaged research projects are dynamic and evolve over time. Based on this analysis, we recommend that CBPR scholars and practitioners select a range of project planning and management techniques for designing and implementing their collaborative research approaches and both expect and allow for the dynamic and changing nature of alignment
Environmental Justice and Regional Political Ecology converge in the other California
This article illuminates the value of the concept of the region in political ecology and environmental justice studies by presenting three arguments about the role of regions in environmental justice social movements engaged in climate change mitigation in California's San Joaquin Valley. First, regional planning agencies and environmental justice advocates are engaged in conflicts over not only the content of regional climate change plans, but the very definitions of region and the authority used to put these regional visions into action. Second, regional organizing provides environmental justice movements with new opportunities to address regional economic patterns and to negotiate with regional planning agencies, both of which influence local manifestations of environmental injustice. Third, regional strategies raise significant dilemmas for these movements as they try to sustain engagement across extensive spatial territories and engage with a broad set of policy and economic protagonists. Together, this analysis demonstrates that a dynamic approach to regions, regionalism, and regionalization can assist political ecology and environmental justice scholars in their common aim of understanding the co-production of social and environmental inequity and collective action to change it.
Key Words: Environmental justice, regional political ecology, climate change mitigation, regional planning, rural community developmen
Cumulative Environmental Vulnerability and Environmental Justice in California’s San Joaquin Valley
The identification of “environmental justice (EJ) communities” is an increasingly common element in environmental planning, policy, and regulation. As a result, the choice of methods to define and identify these communities is a critical and often contentious process. This contentiousness is, in turn, a factor of the lack of a commonly accepted method, the concern among many EJ advocates and some regulators that existing frameworks are inadequate, and ultimately, the significant consequences of such designations for both public policy and community residents. With the aim of assisting regulators and advocates to more strategically focus their efforts, the authors developed a Cumulative Environmental Vulnerability Assessment (CEVA). This CEVA is composed of a Cumulative Environmental Hazard Index and a Social Vulnerability Index, with a Health Index as a reference. Applying CEVA produces spatial analysis that identifies the places that are subject to both the highest concentrations of cumulative environmental hazards and the fewest social, economic and political resources to prevent, mitigate, or adapt to these conditions. We recommended that these areas receive special consideration in permitting, monitoring, and enforcement actions, as well as investments in public participation, capacity building, and community economic development
Weak Coupling Phase from Decays of Charged B Mesons to and
The theory of violation based on phases in weak couplings in the
Cabibbo-Kobayashi-Maskawa (CKM) matrix requires the phase (in a standard convention) to be nonzero. A measurement of
is proposed based on charged meson decay rates to ,
, , and the charge-conjugate states. The corresponding
branching ratios are expected to be of the order of . (submitted to
Physical Review Letters)Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, 2 figures (not included, available upon request),
TECHNION-PH-94-7, EFI-94-14, UdeM-LPN-TH-94-19
An E interpretation of an event
The lowest-dimensional representation of the group E contains both the
standard quarks and leptons and a set of exotic quarks and leptons whose decays
can involve a series of chains ending in radiative decay of one light neutrino
species to another. An example is given based on the decomposition E
SU(2) SU(6), where SU(2) is an ``inert'' subgroup whose gauge
bosons and are all electromagnetically neutral, while SU(6)
contains the conventional SU(5) grand-unified group. The possibility is
explored that such a chain is responsible for an event observed by the Collider
Detector at Fermilab (CDF) involving the production in proton-antiproton
collisions at TeV of an electron-positron pair, two
photons, and missing energy ().Comment: 14 pages, latex, no figures. Revised version submitted to PR
Forward-Backward Asymmetries in Hadronically Produced Lepton Pairs
It has now become possible to observe appreciable numbers of hadronically
produced lepton pairs in mass ranges where the contributions of the photon and
are comparable. Consequently, in the reaction , substantial forward-backward asymmetries can be seen. These
asymmetries provide a test of the electroweak theory in a new regime of
energies, and can serve as diagnostics for any new neutral vector bosons
coupling both to quarks and to charged lepton pairs.Comment: 11 pages, latex, 4 uuencoded figures sent separately, Fig. 2 revise
Atomic Parity Violation and Precision Electroweak Physics - An Updated Analysis
A new analysis of parity violation in atomic cesium has led to the improved
value of the weak charge, . The implications
of this result for constraining the Peskin-Takeuchi parameters S and T and for
guiding searches for new Z bosons are discussed.Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, 3 figures, Submitted to Physical Review D. Updated
experimental inputs and references; clarification of notatio
Charmless decays using flavor SU(3) symmetry
The decays of mesons to a pair of charmless pseudoscalar () mesons are
analyzed within a framework of flavor SU(3). Symmetry breaking is taken into
account in tree () amplitudes through ratios of decay constants; exact SU(3)
is assumed elsewhere. Acceptable fits to and
branching ratios and CP asymmetries are obtained with tree, color-suppressed
(), penguin (), and electroweak penguin () amplitudes. Crucial
additional terms for describing processes involving and include
a large flavor-singlet penguin amplitude () as proposed earlier and a
penguin amplitude associated with intermediate and quarks. For
the mode a term associated with intermediate
and quarks also may be needed. Values of the weak phase are
obtained consistent with an earlier analysis of decays, where
denotes a vector meson, and with other analyses of CKM parameters.Comment: 26 pages, 1 figure. To be submitted to Phys. Rev. D. Reference
update
How generic is cosmic string formation in SUSY GUTs
We study cosmic string formation within supersymmetric grand unified
theories. We consider gauge groups having a rank between 4 and 8. We examine
all possible spontaneous symmetry breaking patterns from the GUT down to the
standard model gauge group. Assuming standard hybrid inflation, we select all
the models which can solve the GUT monopole problem, lead to baryogenesis after
inflation and are consistent with proton lifetime measurements. We conclude
that in all acceptable spontaneous symmetry breaking schemes, cosmic string
formation is unavoidable. The strings which form at the end of inflation have a
mass which is proportional to the inflationary scale. Sometimes, a second
network of strings form at a lower scale. Models based on gauge groups which
have rank greater than 6 can lead to more than one inflationary era; they all
end by cosmic string formation.Comment: 31 pages, Latex, submitted to PR
New Physics Contributions to The B -> phi K_S Decay
Recent measurements of the time-dependent CP asymmetry of the B -> phi K_S
decay give results whose central values differ from standard model
expectations. It is shown how such data can be used to identify new physics
contributions in a model-independent manner. In general, a sizeable new
amplitude with nontrivial weak and strong phases would be required to explain
current data. Improvement in the quality of data will allow one to form a more
definite conclusion.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figures; some references added; analysis updated in light
of recent BaBar data announced at Moriond conferenc
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