Environment and Sustainability in Nevada

When the inaugural Earth Day launched the first environmental decade in the U.S. more than forty years ago, protecting our air, water, land and other natural resources seemed a relatively straightforward task. Environmental polluters and exploiters would be brought to heel by tough laws. The U.S. and other industrialized nations responded to quality of life concerns associated with environmental degradation by adopting dozens of major environmental and resource policies and creating new institutions such as the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to manage environmental programs. Following these national developments, states and local communities began systematic efforts to address environmental problems

The 2009 UNLV Campus Sustainability Survey Report

In an effort to understand environmental awareness, concerns, practices, and values at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), the Urban Sustainability Initiative (USI) conducted its first campus environmental sustainability survey during the months of March, April, and May 2009. This pilot study was developed to collect baseline data from students, faculty, and staff members at the UNLV campus to be used in a longitudinal study that assesses attitudes and preferences towards environmental sustainability issues. This research project is guided by one of the major goals of USI, which involves reaching out to the academic community to help find workable solutions to the challenges facing the Las Vegas metro area, specifically in regards to environmental issues. This long-term study focuses on achieving campus environmental sustainability at UNLV

Bursting the Backpacker Bubble: Exploring Backpacking Ideology, Practices, and Contradictions

In this dissertation, I discuss the growing development of international backpacking in Central America. I focus on backpackers because they are a significant, yet understudied and undertheorized, part of the newly mobile world. Drawing from more than 12 months of ethnographic data collected in Central America, I explore backpacking as a youth subculture. I used a subcultural framework to explain backpacking ideology, practices, and contradictions. Understanding backpacking as a youth subculture tells us a lot about the myths and realities of 21st century adventure in the context of global mobility, globalization, and economic changes in international tourism that shape what backpackers experience and how they experience it. I find that backpackers’ ideology emphasizes a 1) desire to escape, 2) find a level of independence or freedom, which defines their 3) sense of adventure, and enables them to 4) self-reflect on their life and identity. Broadly, backpackers’ key travel practices emphasize the use of 1) the solitary backpack, 2) transportation modes, and 3) information sources. While backpackers have their own unique travel experiences in Central America, they also share and maintain these ideological beliefs and travel practices in common. I also find the backpacker hostel as the socio-cultural space to understand backpackers’ travel ideology in relation to their practices. As a home base, backpackers use the hostel to connect with one another and express their ideas about backpacking. They reflect their backpacking ideology through their real world traveling practices, as they venture outside of the hostel to explore new lands. Yet, backpackers also spend a significant amount of time using the inside of the hostel, which reflects many of the social and cultural vestiges that they hoped to leave behind. Backpackers share travel stories to critique, negotiate, and reconcile tensions in their 21st century backpacking experience

Las Vegas metropolitan area social survey 2010 highlights

UNLV sociologists conducted the Las Vegas Metropolitan Area Social Survey (LVMASS) to identify the socio-spatial distribution of attitudes and attributes relevant to urban sustainability in the Las Vegas Valley. The project goal is to understand how Las Vegas residents think about urban sustainability issues across three dimensions: 1) natural environment; 2) community and quality of life; 3) economy

The Structure of Episodic Memory: Ganeri's ‘Mental Time Travel and Attention’

We offer a framework for assessing what the structure of episodic memory might be, if one accepts the Buddhist denial of persisting selves. This paper is a response to Jonardon Ganeri's paper "Mental time travel and attention", which explores Buddhaghosa's ideas about memory. (It will eventually be published with a reply by Ganeri)

The major genetic determinants of HIV-1 control affect HLA class I peptide presentation.

Infectious and inflammatory diseases have repeatedly shown strong genetic associations within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC); however, the basis for these associations remains elusive. To define host genetic effects on the outcome of a chronic viral infection, we performed genome-wide association analysis in a multiethnic cohort of HIV-1 controllers and progressors, and we analyzed the effects of individual amino acids within the classical human leukocyte antigen (HLA) proteins. We identified >300 genome-wide significant single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within the MHC and none elsewhere. Specific amino acids in the HLA-B peptide binding groove, as well as an independent HLA-C effect, explain the SNP associations and reconcile both protective and risk HLA alleles. These results implicate the nature of the HLA-viral peptide interaction as the major factor modulating durable control of HIV infection