What Doesn't Kill you Makes you Weaker: Prenatal Pollution Exposure and Educational Outcomes

I examine the impact of prenatal suspended particulate pollution on educational outcomes, using ambient total suspended particulates (TSPs) as a measure of particulate exposure and standardized test scores of exposed individuals as a measure of educational achievement. I focus on individuals born between 1979 and 1985 to exploit the shock of the industrial recession of the early 1980s. This variation helps separate the causal effects of pollution reduction from general time trends. Considering the 7-year time period as a whole yields statistically insignificant results, but focusing on the 3-year period around the recession (1981-1983) yields negative and statistically significant results, suggesting that the relationship is subtle enough to require large-scale changes to be detectable. My findings suggest a standard deviation decrease in the mean pollution level in a student’s year of birth is associated with 1.87% of a standard deviation increase in test scores in high school. I also employ an instrumental variables strategy, using changes in relative manufacturing employment driven by the recession as an instrument for TSP levels. Instrumental variables results are approximately 3.7 times the size of the OLS results, suggesting the potential presence of measurement error in ambient pollution. Results are robust to the inclusion of school fixed effects, year of birth and year of test fixed effects, and various demographic and economic covariates. I also investigate the potential bias sources of migration and selection into motherhood, and show these are unlikely to explain my results.motherhood, education

Verifiable and Non-Verifiable Anonymous Mechanisms for Regulating a Polluting Monopolist

Optimal regulation of a polluting natural monopolist must correct for both external damages and market power to achieve a social optimum. Existing non-Bayesian regulatory methods require knowledge of the demand function, while Bayesian schemes require knowledge of the underlying cost distribution. We introduce mechanisms adapted to use less information. Our Price-based Subsidy (PS) mechanisms give the firm a transfer that matches or approximates the incremental surplus generated each period. The regulator need not observe the abatement activity or know the demand, cost, or damage functions of the firm. All of the mechanisms induce the firm to price at marginal social cost, either immediately or asymptotically.surplus subsidy schemes, polluting monopolist, verifiable regulatory mechanisms

Toward a Theory of Boundariness: The Co-Construction of Agency in the First-Year Writing Classroom

Research in composition and rhetoric has not investigated the potential congruence between writing prompts used in the first-year writing classroom and the ways that students understand themselves able to act in relation to such prompts. This thesis therefore examines the link between student’s perception of agency and assignments prompts used in the first-year writing classroom by employing a grounded theory analysis of a first-year writing classroom, where data was collected using ethnographic tools such as student interviews, document collection, and classroom observations. Based on collected data and analysis, I articulate what I call a theory of “boundariness,” which directs our attention to the ways that teachers and students co-construct and co-negotiate authorized classroom space in relation to course documents. As a conceptual metaphor, boundariness, furthermore, illustrates the ways in which individuals act in relation to this co-constructed official space. Results of this study also point out that assessment procedures influenced how students went about their work in the classroom. This thesis closes by noting the limitation of the study, particularly with scope and institutional context, and calls for a critical framework for assignment design, accounting for the co-constructive nature of agency

Forgotten Names

Forgotten Names is a fifteen-minute programmatic work for wind ensemble and electronics. The piece represents my aim to express conceptually the memories of human lives being lost with the passage of time. The two salient vehicles used to convey the concept are melodic motivic development and pre-recorded electronic audio accompanying the ensemble. The prerecorded electronics work in tandem with the ensemble and provide the audience with inferable aural symbolism. These audio samples are to be triggered by a percussionist by using the free, downloadable program, Pure Data along with a performance file provided by the composer. Forgotten Names also draws its influence from similar works by well-known American composers. The pitch material used in this work is derived from On the Transmigration of Souls by John Adams while the formal structure is influenced by Charles Ives’s The Unanswered Question

Dynamic Adjustment of Load Shifting and Reserve Battery Backup Capacity

This disclosure describes techniques for dynamic adjustment of the reserve battery backup capacity and load shifting battery capacity in solar installations. Power generation over time for the day is predicted based on weather conditions, angle of incidence of the sun to the panel, season, etc. Power usage for the day is estimated based on user-permitted data on historical usage patterns, day of week, etc. A predicted net battery usage is determined based on the difference between the predicted power generation and usage. The load shift battery capacity needed for the day is determined by integrating the predicted net battery usage. The minimum reserve battery capacity is determined by calculating the remainder of the battery capacity. Optionally, the battery controller can be integrated with a home automation controller, and HVAC settings can be used to determine a predicted off-grid time under different HVAC settings

Real-time Solar Power Generation Forecasting Based on Cloud Cover Estimation

This disclosure describes techniques for solar power generation forecasting. Multiple camera nodes are deployed along with a threshold number of rooftop solar panels within a geographic region. With appropriate permissions, the camera nodes capture and transmit images of the sky to a server along with location and time information. Each cloud is identified individually, and the height of each cloud is estimated based on its movement. The information for individual clouds is merged to create a sky map of separate layers of clouds based on their height. A consolidated sky map that includes clouds from all heights is transmitted to different solar power generation systems. The sky map with cloud information is utilized to predict future positions of the clouds relative to the local solar power generation system and corresponding cloud cover is determined. Based on the cloud cover, a forecast of solar power generation capacity is obtained

Verifiable and Non-Verifiable Anonymous Mechanisms for Regulating a Polluting Monopolist

Optimal regulation of a polluting natural monopolist must correct for both external damages and market power to achieve a social optimum. Existing non-Bayesian regulatory methods require knowledge of the demand function, while Bayesian schemes require knowledge of the underlying cost distribution. We introduce mechanisms adapted to use less information. Our Price-based Subsidy (PS) mechanisms give the firm a transfer that matches or approximates the incremental surplus generated each period. The regulator need not observe the abatement activity or know the demand, cost, or damage functions of the firm. All of the mechanisms induce the firm to price at marginal social cost, either immediately or asymptotically

Virtual Assistant Device Arbitration by Time-of-Flight Based on Hotword

When multiple devices that support a virtual assistant activated by an activation hotword are present in a particular location, the virtual assistant can trigger on more than one device when a user utters the hotword. There is no existing mechanism for accurate device arbitration. This can cause a device other than the one the user intended (e.g., nearest to the user or most suited to the command) to respond to the user request, leading to user frustration. This disclosure describes techniques to determine the relative proximity of each device to a user using audio propagation time from the user’s utterance of a hotword. The respective proximity of each device to the user is sent to a device arbitration server, which determines with high accuracy and effectiveness the particular device that should respond to the user request

Where Have All the Young Men Gone? Using Gender Ratios to Measure Fetal Death Rates

Fetal health is an important consideration in the formation of health-based policy. However, a complete census of true fetal deaths is impossible to obtain. We present the gender ratio of live births as an under-exploited metric of fetal health and apply it to examine the effects of air quality on fetal health. Males are more vulnerable to side effects of maternal stress in utero, and thus are more likely to suffer fetal death due to pollution exposure. We demonstrate this metric in the context of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1970 (CAAA) which provide a source of exogenous variation in county-level ambient total suspended particulate matter (TSPs). We find that a standard deviation increase in annual average TSPs (approximately 35 μg/m 3) decreases the percentage of live births that are male by 3.1 percentage points. We then explore the use of observed differences in neonatal and one-year mortality rates across genders in response to pollution exposure as a metric to estimate total fetal losses in utero. These calculations suggest the pollution reductions from the CAAA prevented approximately 21,000-134,000 fetal deaths in 1972.