Environmental Protection Agency v. EME Homer City Generation L.P.

The U.S. Supreme Court determined the Environmental Protection Agency properly interpreted the “Good Neighbor Provision” of the Clean Air Act in adopting the Transport Rule. The Court found, contrary to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to vacate the rule entirely, the EPA did not act arbitrarily and capriciously by integrating a cost-effective allocation of emission reductions or by disallowing states a second opportunity to file a State Implementation Plan before promulgating a Federal Implementation Plan

Alaska County Action on Toxics v. Aurora Energy Services, LLC

On September 3, 2014, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed and remanded a district court decision that exempted non-stormwater discharges of coal into Alaska’s Resurrection Bay from Clean Water Act liability. The Court of Appeals reasoned that defendants, Aurora Energy Services, LLC and Alaska Railroad Corp., were not shielded from liability under the Clean Water Act because National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System general permits unambiguously prohibit non-stormwater discharges of coal. The general permit lists eleven categories of authorized non-stormwater discharges, none of which include non-stormwater discharges of coal. Thus, the court concluded that the general permit plainly disallowed defendant’s discharges

Schaghticoke Tribal Nation v. Kent School Corporation Inc.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed dismissal of three consolidated actions of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation claiming the Schaghticoke had been dispossessed of Indian land without the approval of Congress, a violation of the Nonintercourse Act. The court found the district court correctly deferred under the primary jurisdiction doctrine to the United States Department of Interior’s determination that the Schaghticoke did not qualify for tribal status. Additionally, the district court properly relied on the Department of Interior’s factual findings in holding the Schaghticoke presented insufficient evidence to establish a prima facie violation of the Nonintercourse Act

Here and Away: Motherhood and Belonging Among Expat Women in Geneva, Switzerland

The transient space of Geneva hosts a cosmopolitan and mobile population that challenges anthropological understandings of culture, community, and kinship in everyday life. Shrouded in privilege, the world of international expats operated almost invisibly in Geneva. When I asked doctors or midwives questions about them, I heard a dismissive message: "expat women do not have any problems." However, the transition to parenthood is a rite of passage that involved navigating physical, medical, emotional, and social challenges. This dissertation follows a cohort of first-time mothers through pregnancy and birth to explore how their position as expats shaped their prenatal education, care-seeking strategies, experiences, and birth narratives. Expat mothers built narratives of self and networks of support to manage their experiences of pregnancy and birth in Geneva that redefined their relationships to the local and the global, home and away, and the meaning of citizenship. These communities and identities viewed citizenship as strategic rather than as a mode of belonging rooted in local communities. They turned to each other and the internet for guidance and information about health care during pregnancy and birth. Because they often had private health insurance and economic capital, they looked for care in private clinics, trusting the market-based model of care presented. They wanted the ability to choose providers who would work with them for both pregnancy and birth and speak their language with them. However, Geneva has a robust public health system, and women faced fewer unnecessary interventions in the public hospital, so choosing private care in this context carried added risk. I argue that expat women were unable to make informed choices about medical care because their privilege created assumptions of competence which led to blind spots in their understanding of Swiss medical culture and systems of care. These elisions left them unable to advocate for themselves during birth.Doctor of Philosoph

Reproducing margins: situating the anthropology of fertility and migration in Geneva, Switzerland

Populations are not neatly contained in geographic or national areas, and the experiences of transnational populations are elided by traditional demographic practice. Fertility is an ever more contested topic in Europe in part because of ambiguity over the significance of population statistics and anxiety over who is counted as part of the nation. I argue that biopolitical anxieties in contemporary European political discourses conceptualize invasive migration and low fertility as dual problems facing national populations. This paper explores these concepts through a review of the anthropological literature on stratified reproduction and boundary maintenance in European contexts. I use this review to situate my own research in Geneva Switzerland, which brings these two paradigms together in an inquiry into displaced women's family planning practices. Examining the experiences of migrant persons making reproductive decisions in Switzerland on the margins of legitimacy allows me to explore how boundaries are mapped onto bodies and what the consequences are for individuals, families, populations, and nations

Examining the relationship between employee-superior conflict and voluntary turnover in the workplace: A comparison of companies across industries.

Employee turnover is a topic of concern for a multitude of organizations. A variety of work-related factors play into why an individual chooses to change jobs, but these are often symptoms of underlying issues, such as conflict. This study set out to determine if conflict between employees and their superiors has an impact on the level of turnover in an organization, and if manufacturing versus non-manufacturing industry type makes a difference. The generated data were based on 141 selected cases from the ethnographic cases in the Workplace Ethnography Project. Linear and logistic regressions were performed, finding that there is a significant relationship between conflict with superiors and the level of turnover

The Impact of Training on the Frequency of Internal Promotions of Employees and Managers

In this study, the relationship between formal training opportunities and internal promotions in organizations was examined in order to support the value of organizations investing in employees through training opportunities, as training is often seen as an expense to be cut in difficult times. Differences between general and specific training topics on the impact of frequency of promotion in an organization were addressed, as well as assessing differences between employees and managers. Training allows for a more capable workforce and pool of employees to pull from when an organization needs to hire. Hiring from within can save time, money, and allow for a proven person-organization fit that hiring from the external workforce cannot provide. The archival data used in the study were from the National Organizations Survey, 1996-1997 which included organizations of all sizes and forms. The analyses produced mixed support for the hypotheses. Significant relationships were found between hours of formal training and frequency of promotions of employees, and between importance of training in promotions and frequency of promotions for managers. Multiple regressions revealed that the hypothesis predicting that increased hours of training focused on general skills would positively contribute to promotion rates was not supported for either employees or managers. Exploratory analyses were also conducted to further investigate training and promotion practices. Significant contributions to hours and importance of training in promotion were discovered for certain types of skills training for both the employee and manager groups. Comparison between the employee and manager groups across variables found significant differences in certain skill type training. Practical implications of the findings and future study considerations are discussed

Climate adaptation by crop migration.

Many studies have estimated the adverse effects of climate change on crop yields, however, this literature almost universally assumes a constant geographic distribution of crops in the future. Movement of growing areas to limit exposure to adverse climate conditions has been discussed as a theoretical adaptive response but has not previously been quantified or demonstrated at a global scale. Here, we assess how changes in rainfed crop area have already mediated growing season temperature trends for rainfed maize, wheat, rice, and soybean using spatially-explicit climate and crop area data from 1973 to 2012. Our results suggest that the most damaging impacts of warming on rainfed maize, wheat, and rice have been substantially moderated by the migration of these crops over time and the expansion of irrigation. However, continued migration may incur substantial environmental costs and will depend on socio-economic and political factors in addition to land suitability and climate

Trail Users in the Cincinnati Metropolitan Region: Purposes, Patterns, and Preferences

The benefits of using multi-use trails have been recognized from different perspectives, such as improving public health, expanding active transportation options, and enhancing environmental quality. Trail managers in Greater Cincinnati have developed a 212-mile trail network, with plans to expand and connect the system. Given regional priorities for trail development, trail managers and advocates need to understand more about trail users and how they use the network. In response, two nonprofit organizations in this region, Tri-State Trails and Interact for Health, along with the assistance from researchers at the University of Minnesota, launched Greater Cincinnati’s first comprehensive trail measurement program including both trail traffic monitoring and an intercept survey of trail users. Monitoring results show the network is heavily used: in 2017, monitoring results on 137 miles of the network showed users traveled an estimated 11 million miles on those segments annually (Lindsey et al. 2019). This paper describes results of the survey which was designed with questions covering trip characteristics, perceptions of the trails, socio-demographics, and locational information. Between August 2017 and October 2017, 31 trail staff and volunteers administered the survey at 20 locations. 734 responses were obtained. Three methods are used to analyze the survey: descriptive summary, statistical association analysis, and geographical mapping. The descriptive results show 89% of respondents are recreational users while only 8.8% are utilitarian users. These utilitarian users cluster in areas close to Cincinnati downtown and along a centrally located, long trail that connects several communities. Most recreational users are female, white, between 35 and 64 years old, well-educated, and with relatively high incomes. These users primarily bicycled and walked on trails, drove less than 25 minutes to trail, and traveled less than 5 miles. In contrast, most utilitarian users are male, with income of less than $59,999, walked or biked to trail, and traveled no more than 2 miles on trails. Recreational and utilitarian users’ preferences are consistent with positive attitudes towards trail use and environment. Some differences between recreational and utilitarian users are statistically supported using the statistical association analysis. Geographically, the neighborhood context of trail users with different socio-demographics is displayed to illustrate clustering phenomenon among trail users by race and income. The differences between recreational and utilitarian users imply the importance of developing policies to satisfy various needs of trail users. This analysis provides a valuable framework for local governments to evaluate, manage, and improve the multi-use trail network

An Analysis of Utah Media: Women & Politics

As women’s political presence and influence have slowly continued to increase, the way they have been represented in the media has also evolved. Research spanning the past several decades indicates that women politicians continue to be disadvantaged in the way they are covered by the media. From newspapers to primetime television, the way female political candidates are represented is a crucial topic; recent research indicates that women are dissuaded from even entering the political realm due to patterns of gendered media reporting and that “media both produces and reproduces sexism.” Research evaluating media representation of female political candidates spans both the quantity and quality of coverage, including “volume of coverage, candidates’ viability, candidates’ issues, and candidates’ traits.” To date, however, there has been no specific research conducted in Utah on the intersection between media, gender, and politics