Sea level rise adaptation: emerging lessons for local policy development

Many coastal communities across the United States are beginning to plan for climate-related sea level rise. While impacts and solutions will vary with local conditions, jurisdictions which have begun this process seem to pass through three common stages when developing policy for local sea level rise adaptation: l) building awareness about local sea level rise threats, 2) undertaking analyses of local vulnerabilities, and 3) developing plans and policies to deal with these vulnerabilities. The purpose of this paper is to help advance community dialogue and further inform local decision-makers about key elements and steps for addressing climate-related sea level rise. It summarizes the results of a project the Marine Policy Institute (MPI) undertook during 2011-12 to review experiences from fourteen U.S. coastal jurisdictions representing a variety of city, county, and state efforts with sea level adaptation. There are many more initiatives underway than those reflected in this sample, but the “focus jurisdictions” were selected because of the extensive information publically available on their experiences and lessons being learned that could provide insights for coastal communities, especially in Southwest Florida

Visualizing the Results of a Complex Hybrid Dynamic-Static Analysis

Complex static or hybrid static-dynamic analyses produce large quantities of structured data. In the past, this data was generally intended for use by compilers or other software tools that used the produced information to transform the application being analyzed. However, it is becomingly increasingly common for the results of these analyses to be used directly by humans. For example, in our own prior work we have developed a hybrid dynamic-static escape analysis intended to help developers identify sources of object churn within large framework-base applications. In order to facilitate human use of complex analysis results, visualizations need to be developed that allow a user to browse these results and to identify the points of interest within these large data sets. In this paper we present Hi-C, a visualization tool for our hybrid escape analysis that has been implemented as an Eclipse plugin. We show how Hi-C can help developers identify sources of object churn in a large framework-based application and how we have used the tool to assist in understanding the results of a complex analysis

Use of gadolinium in 13C NMR studies

The addition of the paramagnetic reagents gadolinium(18- crown-6) nitrate, gadolinium(dicyclohexano-18-crown-6) nitrate, and gadolinium nitrate pentahydrate to each of the substrates ethylbenzene, and thymidine has been studied in an attempt to obtain quantitative 13C spectra. These reagents reduce the nuclear Overhauser effect and shorten the spin-lattice relaxation times of the carbons of these substrates

Remote monitoring of repository integrity using passive seismic arrays

Once radioactive waste is emplaced in the repository, the challenge of monitoring the continued integrity of the excavated openings (e.g., emplacement drifts) escalates tremendously. We envision a seismic monitoring array installed on the surface at Yucca Mountain, which operates automatically to monitor repository opening stability in the long term. The objective is to monitor and validate the structural integrity of the emplacement drifts through identifying and localizing rock falls that could compromise drift access, hinder waste retrievability, and potentially reduce the effective life of waste canisters. Collateral benefits of the system include the ability to address some outstanding uncertainties regarding seismic wave attenuation in the vicinity of the repository, and provision of a tool for security monitoring of the repository in guarding against unauthorized access and entry

The Dynamics of Intentions in Collaborative Intentionality

An adequate formulation of collective intentionality is crucial for understanding group activity and for modeling the mental state of participants in such activities. Although work on collective intentionality in philosophy, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science has many points of agreement, several key issues remain under debate. This paper argues that the dynamics of intention – in particular, the inter-related processes of plan-related group decision making and intention updating – play crucial roles in an explanation of collective intentionality. Furthermore, it is in these dynamic aspects that coordinated group activity differs most from individual activity. The paper specifies a model of the dynamics of agent intentions in the context of collaborative activity. Its integrated treatment of group decision making and coordinated updating of group-related intentions fills an important gap in prior accounts of collective intentionality, thus helping to resolve a long-standing debate about the nature of intentions in group activity. The paper also defines an architecture for collaboration-capable computer agents that satisfies the constraints of the model and is a natural extension of the standard architecture for resource-bounded agents operating as individuals. The new architecture is both more principled and more complete than prior architectures for collaborative multi-agent systems.Engineering and Applied Science

A Combinatorial Auction for Collaborative Planning

When rational, utility-maximizing agents encounter an opportunity to collaborate on a group activity they must determine whether to commit to that activity. We refer to this problem as the initial-commitment decision problem (ICDP). The paper describes a mechanism that agents may use to solve the ICDP. The mechanism is based on a combinatorial auction in which agents bid on sets of roles in the group activity, each role comprising constituent subtasks that must be done by the same agent. Each bid may specify constraints on the execution times of the subtasks it covers. This mechanism permits agents to keep most details of their individual schedules of prior commitments private. The paper reports the results of several experiments testing the performance of the mechanism. These results demonstrate a significant improvement in performance when constituent subtasks are grouped into roles. They also show that as the number of time constraints in bids increases, the probability that there is a solution decreases, the cost of an optimal solution (if one exists) increases, and the time required to find an optimal solution (if one exists) decreases. The paper also describes several strategies that agents might employ when using this mechanism.Engineering and Applied Science

Detecting Anomalous Inclusions in Soil Profiles: Encouraging the Use of Geophysics to Solve Engineering Problems

Geotechnical site investigations often do not take full advantage of geophysical methods. As examples, when delineating cemented strata and when detecting shallow cavities, investigations can be enhanced greatly for low additional cost by incorporating seismic surface-based measurements

Improved parameterization to invert Rayleigh-wave data for shallow profiles containing stiff inclusions

Inversion of shear-wave velocity profiles from phase-velocity measurements of Rayleigh-wave energy for sites containing stiff layers can be erroneous if such layers are not characterized in the starting or reference model. Incorporation of a priori knowledge then is key for converging upon a realistic or meaningful solution. Resolving soil profiles in desert regions where stiff layers cemented with calcium carbonate are intermixed with softer, uncemented media is an application for which locating shallow stiff inclusions has important implications. Identification of the stiff layers is critical for foundation design and cost estimating of excavations. A parameterization that seems adequate for this problem is to solve for anticipated high-stiffness layers embedded in a coarser (background) profile that captures the general shear-wave velocity trend of the study area. The optimization is accomplished by using simulated annealing. Uncertainty measures resulting from the inversion are helpful for describing the influence of the parameterization on final model estimates

A Model for Youth Financial Education in Extension Involving a Game-Based Approach

University of Idaho Extension educators have developed a library of 10 game-based personal finance programs, collectively known as the Northwest Youth Financial Education project, and have made these programs freely available for Extension educators to use. The purpose of this article is to share highlights from an associated train-the-trainer event and the impacts of one of the 10 programs as it has begun to be implemented. The Northwest Youth Financial Education project serves as a model for effective and engaging youth personal finance education that can be easily implemented or replicated in Extension