Water as an economic good: a solution, or a problem ?

Water resource management / Economic aspects / Economic analysis / Irrigated farming / Water rights / Pricing / Privatization / Marginal analysis / Water market / Water policy

“It was not just a walking experience”: reflections on the role of care in dog-walking.

Research into physical activity and human health has recently begun to attend to dog-walking. This study extends the literature on dog-walking as a health behaviour by conceptualizing dog-walking as a caring practice. It centers on qualitative interviews with 11 Canadian dog-owners. All participants resided in urban neighbourhoods identified through previous quantitative research as conducive to dog-walking. Canine characteristics, including breed and age, were found to influence people’s physical activity. The health of the dog and its position in the life-course influenced patterns of dog-walking. Frequency, duration and spatial patterns of dog-walking all depended on relationships and people’s capacity to tap into resources. In foregrounding networks of care, inclusive of pets and public spaces, a relational conceptualization of dog-walking as a practice of caring helps to make sense of heterogeneity in patterns of physical activity amongst dog-owners. Keywords Dog-walking; physical activity; dog care; human-animal relationship; relational approachesThis work was supported by a New Investigator award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research and a Population Health Investigator award from Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions (AI-HS, funded by the Alberta Heritage Medical Research Foundation Endowment) to Melanie Rock. Chris Degeling’s position at VELiM is part supported by an Alberta Innovates - Health Solutions Incentive Grant to Melanie Rock. Funding to carry out the research that led to our sampling strategy came from a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Operating Grant (principal investigator, Alan Shiell)

Public Health Ethics and a Status for Pets as Person-Things: Revisiting the Place of Animals in Urbanized Societies.

Within the field of medical ethics, discussions related to public health have mainly concentrated on issues that are closely tied to research and practice involving technologies and professional services, including vaccination, screening, and insurance coverage. Broader determinants of population health have received less attention, although this situation is rapidly changing. Against this backdrop, our specific contribution to the literature on ethics and law vis-à-vis promoting population health is to open up the ubiquitous presence of pets within cities and towns for further discussion. An expanding body of research suggests that pet animals are deeply relevant to people’s health (negatively and positively). Pet bylaws adopted by town and city councils have largely escaped notice, yet they are meaningful to consider in relation to everyday practices, social norms, and cultural values, and thus in relation to population health. Nevertheless, not least because they pivot on defining pets as private property belonging to individual people, pet bylaws raise emotionally charged ethical issues that have yet to be tackled in any of the health research on pet ownership. The literature in moral philosophy on animals is vast, and we do not claim to advance this field here. Rather, we pragmatically seek to reconcile philosophical objections to pet ownership with both animal welfare and public health. In doing so, we foreground theorizations of personhood and property from sociocultural anthropology. Keywords : Anthropology; Philosophy; Ethics; Public health; Urban health; PetsCanadian Institutes of Health Research, Open Operating Gran

Public health ethics and More-than-Human solidarity

This article contributes to the literature on One Health and public health ethics by expanding the principle of solidarity. We conceptualize solidarity to encompass not only practices intended to assist other people, but also practices intended to assist non-human others, including animals, plants, or places. To illustrate how manifestations of humanist and more-than-human solidarity may selectively complement one another, or collide, recent responses to Hendra virus in Australia and Rabies virus in Canada serve as case examples. Given that caring relationships are foundational to health promotion, people’s efforts to care for non-human others are highly relevant to public health, even when these efforts conflict with edicts issued in the name of public health. In its most optimistic explication, One Health aims to attain optimal health for humans, non-human animals and their shared environments. As a field, public health ethics needs to move beyond an exclusive preoccupation with humans, so as to account for moral complexity arising from people’s diverse connections with places, plants, and non-human animals. Keywords: health promotion; ecosystem; animal welfare; social sciences; systems theory; ethical theory; Canada; Australi

Traditional Ecological Knowledge Policy Considerations for Abandoned Uranium Mines on Navajo Nation

Environmental justice is a prominent issue for Native American Nations within the United States. One example is the abandoned uranium mines on the Navajo Nation that were left unremediated since the Cold War. Often, environmental policy is developed for issues facing Native American Nations that do not include input from those Nations. Instead, Native American Nations should have the opportunity to address environmental issues using their traditional ecological knowledge (TEK). TEK has ties to natural laws long respected by tribal communities; these laws provide the foundation for addressing the complex relationship between nature and humans. Often, policy development addressing environmental concerns is determined by non-Native American stakeholders, which can have negative effects on the Native American communities. These policies harm Native Americans rather than ultimately helping them. The focus of this discussion is how TEK can play a role in environmental policy development for the Navajo Nation surrounding abandoned uranium mines

Sensor failure detection for jet engines

Revisions to the advanced sensor failure detection, isolation, and accommodation (DIA) algorithm, developed under the sensor failure detection system program were studied to eliminate the steady state errors due to estimation filter biases. Three algorithm revisions were formulated and one revision for detailed evaluation was chosen. The selected version modifies the DIA algorithm to feedback the actual sensor outputs to the integral portion of the control for the nofailure case. In case of a failure, the estimates of the failed sensor output is fed back to the integral portion. The estimator outputs are fed back to the linear regulator portion of the control all the time. The revised algorithm is evaluated and compared to the baseline algorithm developed previously

HYTESS: A hypothetical turbofan engine simplified simulation

A users manual for a hypothetical turbofan engine simplified simulation is presented. This digital simulation exists as FORTRAN source code. The program is self-contained and was developed to offer those interested in engine dynamics and controls research an efficient, realistic, and easily used engine simulation. The engine is modeled using a state space formulation. Matrix elements within the linear state space structure are nonlinear functions of various engine variables