7,539 research outputs found
Eco-terrorism or Eco-tage: An Argument for the Proper Frame
What does the term “terrorism” mean? Is it accurate to lump illegal acts that destroy property but carefully avoid harming people into the same category as acts clearly intended to kill? Is this a difference of kind or just of degree? While we (the authors) don\u27t generally endorse the destruction of property as a method of generating social change, we believe that the destruction of property is fundamentally different from the intentional killing of people; therefore, to label acts of obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage, or arson as “terrorism” is inaccurate and has the potential to damage one\u27s understanding of real acts of terrorism, thereby reducing the potency of the term. We started this project with a hunch. In recent years, we have observed frequent use of the term “eco-terrorism,” in the news media and in conversations, in reference to the acts of environmentalists. Our observations were anecdotal, and we wanted to be sure they were accurate. We found no literature analyzing cultural acceptance of the term “eco-terrorism”; therefore, before embarking on an ethical analysis of this phenomenon, we set out to confirm our casual observation that the term was widely used in the United States. We conducted an analysis of the use of the term in US newspapers across a period of nearly 11 years. Our analysis indicates broad acceptance of the term among both journalists and their sources, making it all the more important to understand both the history and the implications of labeling obstruction, trespassing, vandalism, sabotage, and arson as “eco-terrorism.
Tetrisation of triangular meshes and its application in shape blending
The As-Rigid-As-Possible (ARAP) shape deformation framework is a versatile
technique for morphing, surface modelling, and mesh editing. We discuss an
improvement of the ARAP framework in a few aspects: 1. Given a triangular mesh
in 3D space, we introduce a method to associate a tetrahedral structure, which
encodes the geometry of the original mesh. 2. We use a Lie algebra based method
to interpolate local transformation, which provides better handling of rotation
with large angle. 3. We propose a new error function to compile local
transformations into a global piecewise linear map, which is rotation invariant
and easy to minimise. We implemented a shape blender based on our algorithm and
its MIT licensed source code is available online
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Impact vesiculation – a new trigger for volcanic bubble growth and degassing
We highlight a potentially important trigger for bubble growth and degassing in volcanic bombs. We have successfully triggered bubble growth in previously unvesiculated samples of silicate melt during experiments to simulate volcanic bomb impact, by firing pellets at, and dropping weights onto, melt samples. We call this phenomenon "impact vesiculation". Further work is required on real volcanic bombs to establish the extent to which impact vesiculation occurs in nature. However, our experiments are sufficient to demonstrate that impact vesiculation is a viable processes and should be borne in mind in analysis of bubble populations and degassing histories of bombs and spatter-fed lava flows. Degassing caused by impact vesiculation can occur only at ground-level, so any attempt to calculate the amount of erupted gas available for transport high into the atmosphere by convection above the source of a fountain-fed lava flow that is based on subtracting the volatile content of fluid inclusions from the volatile content of the resulting lava flow would be an overestimate if significant impact vesiculation has occurred
The Effects of Agricultural Research and Farm Subsidy Policies on Human Nutrition and Obesity
Agricultural policies including farm programs and R&D are said to have contributed to obesity by making food commodities cheaper and thereby encouraging consumption. This paper explores the links from agricultural policy to food prices and consumption and suggests that contribution of agricultural policy to obesity is not so clear.Agricultural and Food Policy,
THE WELFARE EFFECTS OF CONSUMING A CANCER PREVENTION DIET
This study measures the welfare changes in agriculture and to consumers should people eat the recommended levels of fruits and vegetables for a cancer prevention diet. An equilibrium displacement model is used to measure the change in welfare to fruit and vegetable industries, other commodities, and agricultural input markets.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
Linkages Between Greater Fruit and Vegetable Consumption and Agriculture
This study will estimate the benefits to fruit and vegetable industries and consumers should people in the U.S. meet the USDA minimum dietary guidelines. Specifically the objectives of the study are to 1) estimate the benefits to fruit and vegetable industries and consumers should people eat the general and subgroup 7-a-day and 9-a-day recommendation; 2) estimate the benefits should smaller increases of only 10 percent or 25 percent be achieved; and 3) determine how agricultural inputs, including land and labor, would be affected by the increase in demand for fruits and vegetables. To protect against the incidence of chronic diseases such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer the 2005 USDA dietary guidelines recommend the consumption of 3 to 4 fruit servings and 4 to 5 vegetable servings a day. They also provide recommendations on the composition of fruit and vegetable consumption as well as the level. For example, almost one serving of dark leafy vegetables is recommended per day. Depite the known health benefits, many people do not eat the amounts recommended in the USDA dietary guidelines and low income consumers (those whose median household income is less than 25,000 a year median income) and higher income households is estimated from the changes in retail prices and final market quantities consumed by each income group.Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety,
Surveillance data: plains segment of the Cache la Poudre River, Colorado, 1970-1977
Chiefly tables.Bibliography: page xi
Are Agricultural Policies Making Us Fat? Likely Links Between Agricultural Policies and Human Nutrition and Obesity, and their Policy Implications
Rates of obesity among adults and children in the U.S. are soaring, with potentially huge private and social costs. Increasing attention is being paid to agricultural policies as both the culprits through their perceived roles in reducing the relative prices of energy-dense foods, and as the potential saviors through their perceived ability to do the opposite. However, the effects of agricultural policies on human nutrition and obesity are not well understood. This paper considers (1) trends in agricultural commodity prices, and the contributions of commodity policies and agricultural R&D policies to those trends, (2) the links between changes in commodity prices and changes in food prices; and (3) the implications of price-induced changes in food characteristics for human nutrition outcomes. Preliminary results suggest that agricultural R&D has led to dramatic decreases in costs of production and to consequent long-term declines in commodity prices, but the links between commodity price declines and food prices are less clear and are conditioned by the changing structure of food markets. Commodity-specific trade policy has clearly put upward pressure on the domestic prices of several major food commodities, but the consumer prices for most of these foods have fallen nonetheless. Changes in relative prices of 'healthy' versus 'unhealthy' foods are difficult to establish empirically, but even if 'healthy' foods are becoming relatively more expensive, food prices in general play only a small role in determining food consumption; hence, policies aiming to reduce obesity through changes in relative food prices may prove ineffective or inefficient.H5, Agricultural and Food Policy, Food Consumption/Nutrition/Food Safety, Q18, Q16, I0,
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