Selected economic development projects in Burma and Indonesia; notes and comments.

Data Paper: Number 15. Total number of pages: 11 p

A Hazard of Diet Pop

Calorie-free carbonated beverages, or diet pops, are becoming increasingly popular and many households no longer contain the older, more familiar, sugar containing, carbonated beverages. Because physicians frequently make use of soda pop when prescribing treatment for common pediatric conditions such as febrile episodes or bouts of vomiting or diarrhea, the following case report is presented to illustrate the fact that physicians must ascertain that the beverage to be used to maintain hydration is not calorie free

A city and its river: an urban political ecology of the Loop and Bridgeport in Chicago

Today’s urban environment is produced, both physically and perceptually, by a myriad of factors. Through a comparative study of two Chicago neighborhoods along the Chicago River, the Loop and Bridgeport, I construct the network of political, social, and economic factors that create the urban environment of the Chicago River in and along these places. I explore residents’ perception of who controls the production of the urban environment as it relates to the Chicago River, and how the socio-environment is created. In this study, I utilize an urban political ecology approach that recognizes that environments produced simultaneously by social and physical processes are historically situated and that there is nothing inherently unnatural about urban, produced environments, but that these environments are a result of historically and spatially contextualized socio-environmental processes. Using this approach in conjunction with interviews, surveys, and participant observation, I analyze these factors to determine who the residents of these neighborhoods perceive as exerting control over the production of the environment of the Chicago River and how these various entities, along with the numerous processes that influence the environment of the river, are mobilized to serve particular purposes. This research allows me to view the interrelated entities that contribute to the production of the environment of the Chicago River as well as to understand that social factors and pressures that have both historically and recently played a larger role in this production than are often ascribed to them by residents

Policy network and content analysis : applications in water resources management and science

This study extends previous work using the state water plans from 1961-2017 with the most recent 2016 regional plan submissions from the Texas Water Development Board, to implement and evaluate a topic analysis methodology. The approach uses statistical analysis of the collection of text documents or corpus to evaluate. Topic Modeling is a systematic approach for analyzing the relationships, usage frequency of words and communities of words to extract themes, concepts, and informational meaning from a selected corpus. This research documents methods for content analysis that can be used on state water plans, as well as other environmental science and policy documents. For this study, nearly 19,658 pages of text from the state and regional water plans for Texas were analyzed. Unsurprisingly, results indicate that “water” is the central common theme connecting all topics. Early results identified a set of primary topics that are shared throughout all regions including planning, strategy, and groundwater. Interestingly, themes varied from west to east reflecting the gradient of arid to humid climates respectively. In the West, themes indicate that regional water planning groups focus more heavily on irrigation and wells for agriculture, while in the East the focus tends to be for municipal uses and surface water strategies, such as reservoirs and infrastructure. This thematic pattern also aligns with the population distribution of Texas, with larger numbers of people in the east, and much less dense populations in the west. Analyses of the state water plans over time illustrate that topics related to drought, planning, and water needs have increased over the period under study. Network statistics reveal that the largest change between state water plans occurred between the 1961 and 1968 plans. Topic analysis methodologies provide an accessible and systematic approach to evaluate the context of water planning, management, and policy across the state. The approach may provide a mechanism for linking quantitative science knowledge about water resources in the state with the qualitative planning and policy perspectives used to manage these critical resources.Energy and Earth Resource