California Voting and Suburbanization Patterns: Implications for Transit Policy, MTI Report 12-05

Public transit is an environmentally friendly transportation mode that usually focuses on transporting people within and to the city center. However, over the last 60 years, population and employment has been suburbanizing. As the median voter lives further from the city center, and thus enjoys fewer benefits from accessing public transit, does this reduce such a voter’s propensity to support public investment in public transit improvements? We analyze voting patterns on 20 transit-related ballot propositions from state-wide elections in California between 1990 and 2010. Controlling for demographic, socio-economic and political ideological factors, we focus on the role of suburbanization as a possible causal factor in determining public support for public transit investment. The results provide a rich picture of the attitudes towards transportation policy among California voters, and will help policy makers to better understand citizen preferences and to better predict how future trends will shift support towards or against transit. Finally, we suggest ways policy makers can use urban land markets to increase support for trans

The Impact of Center City Economic and Cultural Vibrancy on Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Transportation, Research Report 11-13

Urban planners and scholars have focused a great deal of attention on understanding the relationship between the built environment and transportation behavior. However, other aspects of the urban environment – including the vibrancy and quality of life in urban areas – have received little attention. This report seeks to close this gap by analyzing the effects of both land-use and urban vibrancy on transportation patterns. Analysis of data from a variety of sources suggests that in addition to the built-environment, the vibrancy of the urban environment also affects transportation behavior. Moreover, vibrancy affects land-use patterns. By integrating objective measures of center-city quality of life into transportation choice models, our new statistical results inform public policy. We discuss specific public policy options for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and increasing public transit use

Size-based ion selectivity of micropore electric double layers in capacitive deionization electrodes

Capacitive deionization (CDI) is a fast-emerging technology most commonly applied to brackish water desalination. In CDI, salt ions are removed from the feedwater and stored in electric double layers (EDLs) within micropores of electrically charged porous carbon electrodes. Recent experiments have demonstrated that CDI electrodes exhibit selective ion removal based on ion size, with the smaller ion being preferentially removed in the case of equal-valence ions. However, state-of-the-art CDI theory does not capture this observed selectivity, as it assumes volume-less point ions in the micropore EDLs. We here present a theory which includes multiple couterionic species, and relaxes the point ion assumption by incorporating ion volume exclusion interactions into a description of the micropore EDLs. The developed model is a coupled set of nonlinear algebraic equations which can be solved for micropore ion concentrations and electrode Donnan potential at cell equilibrium. We demonstrate that this model captures key features of the experimentally observed size-based ion selectivity of CDI electrodes

Cryptocurrency with a Conscience: Using Artificial Intelligence to Develop Money that Advances Human Ethical Values

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are offering new avenues for economic empowerment to individuals around the world. However, they also provide a powerful tool that facilitates criminal activities such as human trafficking and illegal weapons sales that cause great harm to individuals and communities. Cryptocurrency advocates have argued that the ethical dimensions of cryptocurrency are not qualitatively new, insofar as money has always been understood as a passive instrument that lacks ethical values and can be used for good or ill purposes. In this paper, we challenge such a presumption that money must be ‘value-neutral.’ Building on advances in artificial intelligence, cryptography, and machine ethics, we argue that it is possible to design artificially intelligent cryptocurrencies that are not ethically neutral but which autonomously regulate their own use in a way that reflects the ethical values of particular human beings – or even entire human societies. We propose a technological framework for such cryptocurrencies and then analyse the legal, ethical, and economic implications of their use. Finally, we suggest that the development of cryptocurrencies possessing ethical as well as monetary value can provide human beings with a new economic means of positively influencing the ethos and values of their societies

Managing the Ethical Dimensions of Brain-Computer Interfaces in eHealth: An SDLC-based Approach

A growing range of brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies is being employed for purposes of therapy and human augmentation. While much thought has been given to the ethical implications of such technologies at the ‘macro’ level of social policy and ‘micro’ level of individual users, little attention has been given to the unique ethical issues that arise during the process of incorporating BCIs into eHealth ecosystems. In this text a conceptual framework is developed that enables the operators of eHealth ecosystems to manage the ethical components of such processes in a more comprehensive and systematic way than has previously been possible. The framework’s first axis defines five ethical dimensions that must be successfully addressed by eHealth ecosystems: 1) beneficence; 2) consent; 3) privacy; 4) equity; and 5) liability. The second axis describes five stages of the systems development life cycle (SDLC) process whereby new technology is incorporated into an eHealth ecosystem: 1) analysis and planning; 2) design, development, and acquisition; 3) integration and activation; 4) operation and maintenance; and 5) disposal. Known ethical issues relating to the deployment of BCIs are mapped onto this matrix in order to demonstrate how it can be employed by the managers of eHealth ecosystems as a tool for fulfilling ethical requirements established by regulatory standards or stakeholders’ expectations. Beyond its immediate application in the case of BCIs, we suggest that this framework may also be utilized beneficially when incorporating other innovative forms of information and communications technology (ICT) into eHealth ecosystems

Book Review Essay: The Mature Phase: Four Generations of Scholarship on Colonial Mesoamerica and New Spain

This essay reviews the following works: Native Wills from the Colonial Americas: Dead Giveaways in a New World. Edited by Mark Christensen and Jonathan Truitt. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 276. $55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781607814160. Strange Lands and Different Peoples: Spaniards and Indians in Colonial Guatemala. By W. George Lovell, Christopher H. Lutz, with Wendy Kramer and William R. Swezey. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 339.$34.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780806143903. Indians and the Political Economy of Colonial Central America, 1670–1810. By Robert W. Patch. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. ix + 284. $36.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780806144009. The Mixtecs of Oaxaca: Ancient Times to the Present. By Ronald Spores and Andrew K. Balkansky. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2013. Pp. xvi + 328.$45.00 cloth. ISBN: 9780806143811. Emotions and Daily Life in Colonial Mexico. Edited by Javier Villa-Flores and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2014. Pp. ix + 257. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9780826354624

A Phenomenological “Aesthetics of Isolation” as Environmental Aesthetics for an Era of Ubiquitous Art

Here the concept of the human being as a “relatively isolated system” developed in Ingarden’s later phenomenology is adapted into an “aesthetics of isolation” that complements conventional environmental aesthetics. Such an aesthetics of isolation is especially relevant, given the growing “aesthetic overload” brought about by ubiquitous computing and new forms of art and aesthetic experience such as those involving virtual reality, interactive online performance art, and artificial creativity

Search for invisible Higgs boson production with the CMS detector at the LHC

Results are presented for the search for invisible Higgs boson production using the full LHC dataset corresponding to integrated luminosity of 5.1 fb^-1 and 19.6 fb^-1 of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s)= 7 TeV and 8 TeV (respectively) collected by the CMS detector. The invisible Higgs is searched for in final states of missing transverse energy, with two leptons from a recoiling Z boson. No significant excess is found beyond standard model predictions, and limits are obtained on the branching fraction of the Higgs boson to invisible particles.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures, DPF 2013, The Meeting of the American Physical Society, Division of Particles and Fields, Santa Cruz, California, August 13-17, 201