Creating Shared Value Through Corporate Social Investment: Managing Water-Related Risk and Opportunity Through Coca-Cola's Replenish Africa Initiative

Nearly 300 million people throughout the African continent lack access to clean drinking water, and far more are without improved sanitation facilities. Companies such as The Coca-Cola Company, which rely on access to freshwater resources and surrounding communities for their core business operations and supply chains, face growing material risks as well as opportunities from the global water crisis (which includes sanitation challenges as well). Investments in water stewardship are becoming an increasingly common strategy for corporate or other private investors to both manage downside risk and build upside potential, particularly in emerging economies throughout the African region. Indeed, organizations that are able to forge relationships with markets and societies in Africa today are likely to be well positioned to enjoy the high rates of growth projected for the region. This report highlights 5 thematic area where business benefits from water stewardship investments can be realized, including: corporate competitiveness, operational efficiency, human capital, social capital, and risk exposure. Through the development of original spatial analyses, the report underscores selected trends and presents a series of recommendations for what type of water stewardship activities should be targeted to specific countries. Through a systemsbased mapping of over 50 distinct dimensions of both societal and business value creation and their interconnections, the report also discusses several high-level leverage points for value creation. These leverage points are capable of effecting deep systems-level change, and are presented as recommended programmatic themes. Finally, The Coca-Cola Africa Foundation’s Replenish Africa Initiative (RAIN) is presented and discussed as an example of a water stewardship investment that provides numerous benefits to societies, to larger economies, and to natural ecosystems.Master of ScienceNatural Resources and EnvironmentUniversity of Michiganhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113283/1/Creating Shared Value Through Corporate Social Investment - Mitler Rostorfer Ledbetter 2015.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113283/2/Executive Summary-Water Stewardship in Africa the Next Frontier for Building Shared Value.pdfDescription of Executive Summary-Water Stewardship in Africa the Next Frontier for Building Shared Value.pdf : Executive Summar

The role of electron-screening deformations in solar nuclear fusion reactions and the solar neutrino puzzle

Thermonuclear fusion reaction rates in the solar plasma are enhanced by the presence of the electron cloud that screens fusing nuclei. The present work studies the influence of electron screening deformations on solar reaction rates in the framework of the Debye-Huckel model. These electron-ion cloud deformations, assumed here to be static and axially symmetric, are shown to be able to considerably influence the solar neutrino fluxes of the pp and the CNO chains, with reasonable changes in the macroscopic parameters of the standard solar model (SSM) . Various known deformation sources are discussed but none of them is found strong enough to have a significant impact on the SSM neutrino fluxes.Comment: Revised version (14 RevTeX pages, 3 ps figures). Accepted for publication in Nuclear Physics

Alpha decay rate enhancement in metals: An unlikely scenario

It has been recently suggested that one might drastically shorten the alpha lifetime of nuclear waste products, if these are embedded in metals at low temperatures. Using quantum mechanical tunneling arguments, we show that such an effect is likely to be very small, if present at all.Comment: RevTeX4. 5 pages, 1 figure. Accepted by Nucl. Phys.

Helioseismology and solar neutrinos: an update

We review recent advances concerning helioseismology, solar models and solar neutrinos. Particularly we address the following points: i) helioseismic tests of recent SSMs; ii) predictions of the Beryllium neutrino flux based on helioseismology; iii) helioseismic tests regarding the screening of nuclear reactions in the Sun.Comment: 7 pages with 6 eps figure included, LaTeX file with espcrc2.sty, to appear on the Proceedings of "EuroConference on Frontiers in Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology", San Feliu de Guixols, Spain, 30 September -5 October 200

Non-linear screening corrections of stellar nuclear reaction rates and their effects on solar neutrino fluxes

Non-linear electron screening corrections of stellar nuclear fusion rates are calculated analytically in the framework of the Debye-Huckel model and compared with the respective ones of Salpeter's weak screening approximation. In typical solar conditions, the deviation from Salpeter's screening factor is less than one percent, while for hotter stars such corrections turn out to be of the order of one percent only over the limits of the Debye-Huckel model. Moreover, an investigation of the impact of the derived non-linear screening effects on the solar neutrino fluxes yields insignificant corrections for both the pp and CNO chain reactions.Comment: To appear in Phys.Rev.

High Volume Hydraulic Fracturing In Michigan Integrated Assessment Final Report

This report is part of the Hydraulic Fracturing in Michigan Integrated Assessment (IA) which has been underway since 2012. The guiding question of the IA is, “What are the best environmental, economic, social, and technological approaches for managing hydraulic fracturing in the State of Michigan?” The purpose of the IA is to present information that: • expands and clarifies the scope of policy options, and • allows a wide range of decision makers to make choices based on their preferences and values. As a result, the IA does not advocate for recommended courses of action. Rather, it presents information about the likely strengths, weaknesses, and outcomes of various options to support informed decision making. The project’s first phase involved the preparation of technical reports on key topics related to hydraulic fracturing in Michigan which were released by the University of Michigan’s Graham Sustainability Institute in September 2013. This document is the final report for the IA. The IA report has been informed by the technical reports, input from an Advisory Committee with representatives from corporate, governmental, and non-governmental organizations, a peer review panel, and numerous public comments received throughout this process. However, the report does not necessarily reflect the views of the Advisory Committee or any other group which has provided input. As with preparation of the technical reports, all decisions regarding content of project analyses and reports have been determined by the IA Report and Integration Teams. While the IA has attempted to provide a comprehensive review of the current status and trends of high volume hydraulic fracturing (HVHF), specifically, in Michigan (the technical reports) and an analysis of policy options (this report) there are certain limitations which must be recognized: • The assessment does not and was not intended to provide a quantitative assessment (human health or environmental) of the potential risks associated with HVHF. Completing such assessments is currently a key point of national discussion related to HVHF despite the challenges of uncertainty and limited available data–particularly baseline data. • The assessment does not provide an economic analysis or a cost-benefit analysis of the presented policy options. While economic strengths and/or weaknesses were identified for many of the options, these should not be viewed as full economic analyses. Additional study would be needed to fully assess the economic impact of various policy actions, including no change of current policy.U-M Graham Sustainability InstituteU-M Energy InstituteU-M Erb Institute for Global Sustainable EnterpriseU-M Risk Science CenterPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113663/1/HF-IA-Final-Report.pdfhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/113663/2/HF-IA-Final-Exec-Summary.pdf-1Description of HF-IA-Final-Report.pdf : Full ReportDescription of HF-IA-Final-Exec-Summary.pdf : Executive Summar

Screened alpha decay in dense astrophysical plasmas and magnetars

This paper shows that ultrastrong magnetic fields (such as those of magnetars) and dense astrophysical plasmas can reduce the half life of alpha decaying nuclei by many orders of magnitude. In such environments the conventional Geiger-Nuttall law is modifed so that all half lives are shifted to dramatically lower values. Those effects, which have never been investigated before, may have significant implications on the universal abundances of heavy radioactive elements and the cosmochronological methods that rely on them.Comment: 15 RevTex pages, 3 ps figures (minor revision). This work was presented during the conference ''Supernova, 10 years of SN1993J'', April 2003, Valencia, Spain. Accepted for publication in Phys.Rev.

Evolution of Li, Be and B in the Galaxy

In this paper we study the production of Li, Be and B nuclei by Galactic cosmic ray spallation processes. We include three kinds of processes: (i) spallation by light cosmic rays impinging on interstellar CNO nuclei (direct processes); (ii) spallation by CNO cosmic ray nuclei impinging on interstellar p and 4He (inverse processes); and (iii) alpha-alpha fusion reactions. The latter dominate the production of 6Li and 7Li. We calculate production rates for a closed-box Galactic model, verifying the quadratic dependence of the Be and B abundances for low values of Z. These are quite general results and are known to disagree with observations. We then show that the multi-zone multi-population model we used previously for other aspects of Galactic evolution produces quite good agreement with the linear trend observed at low metallicities without fine tuning. We argue that reported discrepancies between theory and observations do not represent a nucleosynthetic problem, but instead are the consequences of inaccurate treatments of Galactic evolution.Comment: 26 pages, 5 figures, LaTeX. The Astrophysical Journal, in pres