Thirsty for Justice: A People's Blueprint for California Water

The report's first chapter analyzes the origins of environmental discrimination in California water policy. After an overview of how low income communities and communities of color have been historically left out of California water management, we analyze political, economic and social trends that produce the current exclusionary system and emerging policies and technologies that could further harm low-income communities and communities of color.In the second chapter, we provide an overview of what we term "water governance": who controls water supply and quality and what agencies are responsible for ensuring that people have enough clean water. We explain the current system of water governance, examine changing patterns in control over water, and provide examples of communities that face profound barriers to participating in water decisions. We conclude by discussing barriers within water regulatory entities that prevent community voices from entering into water decision-making.In the third chapter, we provide a picture of water-related environmental injustices that low-income communities and communities of color face on a daily basis. These communities' lack of access to safe, affordable drinking water and healthy watersheds exemplifies the health burdens many communities bear as a result of California's water policies.Our report concludes with policy recommendations for how to remedy some of the most pressing water concerns low-income communities and communities of color face, in order to guarantee the basic right to safe and affordable water

Prognostic value of adenosine stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance in patients with low-risk chest pain

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Approximately 5% of patients with an acute coronary syndrome are discharged from the emergency room with an erroneous diagnosis of non-cardiac chest pain. Highly accurate non-invasive stress imaging is valuable for assessment of low-risk chest pain patients to prevent these errors. Adenosine stress cardiovascular magnetic resonance (AS-CMR) is an imaging modality with increasing application. The goal of this study was to evaluate the negative prognostic value of AS-CMR among low-risk acute chest pain patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We studied 103 patients, mean 56.7 ± 12.3 years of age, with chest pain and no electrocardiographic evidence of ischemia and negative cardiac biomarkers of necrosis, who were admitted to the Cardiac Decision Unit of our institution. All patients underwent AS-CMR. A negative AS-CMR was defined as absence of all the following: regional wall motion abnormalities at rest; perfusion defects during stress (adenosine) and rest; and myocardial scar on late gadolinium enhancement images. The patients were followed for a mean of 277 (range 161-462) days. The primary end point was defined as the combination of cardiac death, nonfatal acute myocardial infarction, re-hospitalization for chest pain, obstructive coronary artery disease (>50% coronary stenosis on invasive angiography) and coronary revascularization.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In 14 patients (13.6%), AS-CMR was positive. The remaining 89 patients (86.4%), who had negative AS-CMR, were discharged. No patient with negative AS-CMR reached the primary end-point during follow-up. The negative predictive value of AS-CMR was 100%.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>AS-CMR holds promise as a useful tool to rule out significant coronary artery disease in patients with low-risk chest pain. Patients with negative AS-CMR have an excellent short and mid-term prognosis.</p

Interview with John Gibler

War on drugs and war of drugs Guerra contra las drogas y guerra de las drogas John Gibler; writer and journalist John Gibler; escritor y periodist

Contiguous States, Stable Borders and the Peace between Democracies

Abstract Park and Colaresi find that border stability does not apply to non-contiguous states. This just confirms, again, an argument I have been making in numerous publications since my original &quot;Bordering on Peace&quot; article. Nevertheless, I use this response to present a replication of my original argument, as it applies to contiguous states, and I find strong support for the contention that the democratic peace can better be understood as a stable border peace. I also discuss several different replications of the original argument using different proxies for stable borders. Each confirms that joint democracy is not a statistically significant predictor of conflict once stable borders are also included in the model. In sum, arguments from the territorial peace have been confirmed in multiple analyses, with multiple datasets, using multiple levels of analysis, and this renders Park and Colaresi&apos;s attack on the original &quot;Bordering on Peace&quot; a non sequitur in the debate over stable borders as an explanation of democracy and peace

A comparative test of theories of polarity and conflict

Works on the relationship between polarity and war in the past produce inconsistent, sometimes, self-conflicting conclusions. This is caused by the lack of a comparable way of conceptualizing and defining polarity and the lack of a common gauge for estimating that relationship. This research addresses these methodological shortcomings and explores the linkage between the international system of the major powers and dyadic conflict by conducting a comparative study of polarity and war. It tests the targeted relationship using: 1) a number of quantifiable polarity concepts proposed by several representative scholars, including John Mearsheimer, Jack Levy, Charles Kegley and Gregory Raymond, and George Modelski; 2) a common research design that has incorporated the Kantian variables and has drawn the essence from the latest progress in this discipline, and 3) an objective method of calculating a continuous measure of the polarity among the great powers. Such a research design can compare the impact of various types of polarity on the onset of wars while controlling for both realist and Kantian influences. It provides a broad prospective on the connection between polarity and war. This study confirms the existence of a connection between polarity and war of unipolarity > bipolarity > multipolarity in order of peacefulness. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries