Assessing the Energy-Efficiency Information Gap: Results from a Survey of Home Energy Auditors

Commercial and residential buildings are responsible for 42 percent of all U.S. energy consumption and 41 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions. Engineering studies identify several investments in new enegy-efficiency equipment or building retrofits that would more than pay for themselves in terms of lower future energy costs, but homeowners and businesses generally do not have good information about how to take advantage of these opportunities. Energy auditors make up a growing industry of professionals who evaluate building energy use and provide this information to building owners. This paper reports the results of a survey of nearly 500 home energy auditors and contractors that Resources for the Future conducted in summer 2011. The survey asked about the characteristics of these businesses and the services they provide, the degree to which homeowners follow up on their recommendations, and the respondents’ opinions on barriers to home energy retrofits and the role for government. Findings from the survey suggest that the audit industry only partially is filling the information gap. Not enough homeowners know about or understand audits, and the follow-through on recommendations once they do have audits is incomplete. But the survey findings suggest that low energy prices and the high cost of retrofits may be more responsible for these outcomes than failures of information.energy efficiency, climate change

Riverine macroinvertebrate responses to chlorine and chlorinated sewage effluents - acute chlorine tolerances of Baetis harrisoni (Ephemeroptera) from two rivers in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa

Chlorine is widely used in South African sewage treatment works, and despite its volatility is likely to have a considerable impact on riverine ecosystems. This paper considers the results of acute (96 h) toxicity responses to chlorine of riverine mayfly nymphs Baetis harrisoni collected from the small, relatively uncontaminated suburban Westville Stream, KwaZulu-Natal and from the more severely impacted Umbilo River, which flows through the industrial area of Pinetown, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. The 96 h LC5

Prelude to a Systematic Review of Activity-based Funding of Hospitals: Potential Effects on Cost, Quality, Access, Efficiency, and Equity

Until recently, hospital funding in Canada has been based predominantly on global budgets, but health care system decision-makers throughout the country are now seriously considering an alternative funding model referred to as activity-based funding (ABF). Under this system, hospital services are classified prospectively into clinically meaningful "bundles" of care that use similar levels of resources. Opinion is divided as to whether ABF would help the Canadian health care system to achieve any of the putative benefits originally achieved by ABF in other countries, or whether the risks would outweigh the benefits. As yet, there has been no systematic review of the evidence. In March 2012 our research team launched a systematic review to inform Canadian policy-makers about how this funding model affects health care systems around the world. Of the more than 16 000 potentially eligible titles and abstracts screened, 261 studies, representing 64 countries (either singly or in aggregate), provide data on at least one of the cost, quality, access, efficiency, and equity outcomes of interest to our research team. We are now in the process of analyzing data from the eligible studies most germane to the Canadian context. This commentary is intended to alert decision-makers to the upcoming release of a series of papers based on our systematic review of ABF, in the hope that our synthesis will soon provide a more robust evidence base to better inform decision-makers

Making a Place for Justice: Spirituality and Placemaking in the Sociopolitical Development of Black Emerging Adult Women in Urban Contexts

Emerging adulthood (ages 18-29) is a developmental period in which individuals explore their identities, achieve status markers (e.g., marriage), and become able to participate more fully in democracy (Arnett, 2000). There has been substantial exploration of emerging adulthood broadly, but relatively little attention has been paid to emerging adult aged Black women and the ways they navigate the world, their identities, and their sociopolitical development. This dissertation investigated the role of social identities (e.g., race and gender), cultural ideologies (i.e., religiosity/spirituality), and spatial context (i.e., cities and urban higher education institutions) in the SPD of Black emerging adult women (BEAW). Across three studies, I used conceptual frames linking SPD, urban place, religiosity/spirituality (SET- RS Urban; Mattis et al., 2019), Black placemaking, and Black feminist geography (Hunter et al., 2016; McKittrick, 2006) to address three intersecting questions. Study 1 used survey data to address the question: To what extent are religiosity/spirituality and urban place associated with SPD (measured by critical reflection, critical agency, and critical action) among BEAW? In Study 2, I used a qualitative approach and asked: How, if at all, does the religiosity/spirituality of BEAW influence their sociopolitical development? In Study 3, I used a qualitative approach informed by Black feminist epistemology to address the question: How do the ways that BEAW “make place” (i.e., experience, perceive, and imagine urban places—especially urban universities) inform their sociopolitical development? Taken as a whole, these three studies produced new understandings of the ways that urban places and identity engender sociopolitical reflection, efficacy, and action among BEAW. First, Study 1 demonstrated that the various manifestations of religiosity and spirituality are associated with different domains of SPD among BEAW. These findings offered a call to researchers to 1) more thoroughly investigate the dimensions of religiosity and spirituality through communally based measures, and 2) investigate broader denominational, ideological, and regional differences in the socialization of BEAW and how these relate to SPD. Study 2 highlighted that BEAW used religiosity/spirituality as a source of efficacy and motivation as they pursued social justice. Participants placed their actions in a larger and narrative of Divinely-guided justice. This enabled them to undertake the work of justice as a moral good and a as an effort tied to divine purpose. Finally, participants saw themselves as a part of a spiritual sisterhood which allowed them to collectively reflect and engage in critical actions. In Study 3, participant narratives highlight that BEAW critically reflect on and navigate spatial manifestations of oppression in their cities and campuses while at the same time endeavoring to ameliorate these ills through Black placemaking. Further, BEAW not only resist oppressions in these places. They actively cultivate joy and celebrate their everyday existence as Black women.PhDHigher Ed & Psychology PhDUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169708/1/palmergj_1.pd

The relationship between concurrently measured SASS (South African Scoring System) and turbidity data archived in the South African River Health Programme’s Rivers Database

The need for monitoring the biological impacts of instream sediments has long been recognised, yet robust and scientifically defensible tools for doing so are still in the early stages of development because of the difficulties experienced by researchers in characterising the complicated mechanisms of biological effect elicited by sediment particles. Biological monitoring is one such tool, and this paper reports on the initial stages of a study to determine the most applicable approach for measuring the effects of instream sediments on aquatic macroinvertebrates in the South African context. In this first instance, the suitability of the rapid macroinvertebrate biomonitoring tool (the South African Scoring System) was investigated by determining the extent of the correlation between concurrently measured SASS metrics and turbidity data collected for the South African River Health Programme. All three SASS metrics – SASS score, number of taxa (NOT), and average score per taxon (ASPT) – were found to be significantly negatively correlated with turbidity, although variation in the data was high. Turbidity was found to be the major driver of change in ASPT. In contrast, electrical conductivity was the major driver of SASS scores and NOT, with turbidity a close second. When combined, electrical conductivity and turbidity accounted for 80 percent (SASS score) and 75 percent (NOT) of the variation in the regression model. Consequently, SASS metrics are a crude, but reliable, indicator of the negative biological implications of excessive instream sedimentation as measured by turbidity. A number of other potential biomonitoring approaches for detecting the impacts of fine sediment exposure are identified for further investigation: spatial analyses of macroinvertebrate assemblages; and the use of structural and functional metrics