Evaluating the On-Site Impacts of the Ambatovy Project through the Lens of Environmental Justice

In Madagascar, sustainable development has been established and maintained by dominant foreign actors to reconcile neoliberalism with globalized conceptions of environmental protection. The Ambatovy mining and refining project has emerged as a prominent example of this developmental mode; Ambatovy is the largest economic enterprise in the history of the country and one of the largest and most productive mining operations in the world, generating billions of dollars in revenue for a country that remains among the poorest in the world while offsetting its impact on endemic biodiversity and forest habitat through conservation initiatives. At the same time, the evaluative framework of environmental justice reveals that the project has largely failed to generate just and comprehensive development in mine-adjacent communities, and that Ambatvoy’s claims to sustainability marginalize collective wellbeing. Through qualitative interviews with local residents, we learn that economic benefits associated with mine’s presence are difficult to access due to unaddressed structural poverty. Ambatovy has improved the quality of life of community members who have privileged access to employment, training, revenue, and direct aid, but the most immediate and wide reaching impact of the project on local residents is a cascade of environmental degradation; participants reported that the project has marginalized traditional livelihoods and created mass employment, driving crime and theft that threatens to destabilize community security. Residents continue to seek solutions from Ambatovy in the form of jobs and direct aid but these efforts are mediated by the significant power disparities that pervade local peoples’ relationship with the project. Just futures for mine-adjacent communities may not be secured unless wholesale changes are to the larger paradigm of sustainable development

“Vicariously” - Short Film

This film helped me to fulfill something academically, and allowed me to do something challenging and out of my comfort zone. Academically, I wanted to have the effect of a “jointed perception” experience. I wanted to explore the basic idea of what Synesthesia is, or how I interpret it. Synesthesia is a psychological phenomenon that means jointed perception of the senses. So when one takes something in by sight, sound, feel, taste, touch, one actually experiences it in another sense. I thought everyone could relate to this phenomenon in some form, even if not clinically diagnosed. When I learned about it, it fascinated me. I wanted to communicate that when Allie, the main character, hears, she sees; it triggers her memories. Then, since the viewer sees the film, I had hoped it would allow him or her to feel something emotionally. I believe this is a true goal of a film for a filmmaker, to establish this form of “jointed perception.” This film was also challenging and out of my comfort zone because it was personal, and it was told through so much imagery with music. The story of the short film, Vicariously, is heartfelt; it is about the relationship between a single father and his daughter. The basic premise is that the daughter is leaving to start her life, and the father has to let go, and accept he did right by her, raising her, and that she will be successful. It is left ambiguous where she is going exactly, but the viewer knows she is on a journey without him, and has grown up. I left it ambiguous on purpose, as it is not important for the message. In film school, one of the earliest things one learns is how to make the general, specific, and the specific, general, in a way that the theme or message resonates with the audience. The connection with a specific character can show an experience that may be felt by many people throughout life. This story, and its message, is also timely for the audience it is being screened to, and timely in my life. It was cathartic to make, as I graduate and start my next chapter, and have to let go of what is safe and try to strive for my dreams. It also made me reflect on the relationship I have with my own father, and how he has helped shape me into the person I am today. The story puts this young woman, Allie, leaving on a train. As she travels, she listens to her iPod. The song envelops the scene, no longer making the viewer a passenger with her, but putting the viewer inside her head, as she goes back into memories. These memories are triggered by the words and message of the song. In order to accomplish my capstone film, I wore many hats. I not only came up with the concept-which evolved-I was the writer, producer, director, and editor. I also did many, other, smaller, on-set jobs. I had a large crew to facilitate on-set production as well. It was about twenty people, including the cast. My capstone would not have been executed without the help of Professor Tula Goenka, who acted as an advisor and executive producer through the TRF 469 Advanced Filmmaking course

Remote depth survey of the Charles River Basin

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2007.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 17).Unmanned vehicles may provide more time- and cost-effective methods of gathering hydrographic survey data when compared to traditional, manned survey vessels. A remote-controlled unmanned surface vehicle (USV) was outfitted with a depth transducer for the purpose of conducting a depth survey of the Charles River Basin. Two windsurfer fins were added to the stem of the USV kayak for directional stability without significant drag, permitting a maximum vessel speed of 4.4 knots. A total of 1485 latitude-longitude GPS points with corresponding depth measurements were taken. Charles Basin data was plotted with ArcGIS software and used to create depth contours and three-dimensional surface plots of the river bottom. This prototype survey USV displays promise and could become readily feasible with further development and autonomy.by Evan A. Karlik.S.B

Barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) Improvement Past, Present and Future

Barley has been cultivated for more than 10,000 years. Barley improvement studies always have the privilege of the breeders and scientists. This review is expected to provide a resource for researchers interested in barley improvement research in terms of mutation breeding, tissue culture, gene transfers, gene editing, molecular markers, transposons, epigenetic, genomic studies and system biology. We aimed to discuss some important and/or recent studies and improvements about barley for understanding the factors responsible for converting barley plants into the superior cereals, which occurred through gene transfers, gene editing and molecular breeding, which is important and could help us enhance the current pool of cultivated barley species to provide enough material for the future

Predicting event attendance exploring social influence

The problem of predicting people's participation in real-world events has received considerable attention as it offers valuable insights for human behavior analysis and event-related advertisement. Today social networks (e.g. Twitter) widely reflect large popular events where people discuss their interest with friends. Event participants usually stimulate friends to join the event which propagates a social influence in the network. In this paper, we propose to model the social influence of friends on event attendance. We consider non-geotagged posts besides structures of social groups to infer users' attendance. To leverage the information on network topology we apply some of recent graph embedding techniques such as node2vec, HARP and Poincar`e. We describe the approach followed to design the feature space and feed it to a neural network. The performance evaluation is conducted using two large music festivals datasets, namely the VFestival and Creamfields. The experimental results show that our classifier outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline with 89% accuracy observed for the VFestival dataset

Incidence of syphilis and gonorrhea in Osijek-Baranya county in the period of 2000-2016

Cilj istraživanja: Ovaj rad obrađuje incidenciju sifilisa i gonoreje u Osječko-baranjskoj županiji koju zatim uspoređuje s incidencijom ovih bolesti u Republici Hrvatskoj. U radu se također može naći usporedba broja slučajeva sifilisa i gonoreje zabilježenih u Epidemiološkoj ispostavi Osijek s brojem oboljelih evidentiranih u ostalim ispostavama OBŽ. Rad uključuje i raspodjelu oboljelih od sifilisa i gonoreje po dobnim skupinama te distribuciju incidencije ovih bolesti po dobi i po spolu. Nacrt studije: Odnosni podatci retrospektivno su analizirani u periodu od 2000. do 2016. godine. Materijal i metode: Istraživanje je obuhvatilo 48 ispitanika koji su oboljeli od sifilisa i gonoreje. Podatci o oboljelima preuzeti su iz baze podataka ZZJZ-a Osječko-baranjske županije. U radu su korišteni Hrvatski znanstveno-statistički ljetopisi za 2006. i 2016. godinu te popisi stanovništva iz 2001. i 2011. godine. Podatci su analizirani po dobi i po spolu te po terenskoj raspodjeli na području OBŽ. Rezultati: Incidencija sifilisa u Osječko-baranjskoj županiji u razdoblju od 2000. do 2010. godine iznosi 3 oboljela na 100.000 stanovnika, a incidencija gonoreje 7,9 oboljelih na 100.000 stanovnika. U razdoblju od 2011. do 2016. godine incidencija sifilisa u Osječko-baranjskoj županiji spustila se na 1,6 oboljela na 100.000 stanovnika, a gonoreje na 2,3 oboljela na 100.000 stanovnika. U posljednjih se 17 godina bilježi pad incidencije sifilisa i gonoreje. Utvrđeno je da je u Osijeku manja incidencija sifilisa nego u ostalim epidemiološkim ispostavama OBŽ, ali i da se, s druge strane, u najvećem gradu ove Županije javlja više slučajeva gonoreje. Nema statistički značajne razlike u broju oboljelih ovisno o spolu i dobi. Zaključak: Pojavnost sifilisa i gonoreje u OBŽ opada. Daljnjim kontinuiranim praćenjem i analizom trendova incidencije osigurava se još bolja kontrola ovih bolesti.Research Objective: This study presents the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea in the Osijek-Baranya County, its comparison with the incidence of those diseases in the Republic of Croatia, a comparison of the number of syphilis and gonorrhoea cases registered in the Epidemiological Office in Osijek with the number of appertaining cases in other epidemiological field offices in the Osijek-Baranya County, a comparison of the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea with respect to age categories and case distribution regarding age and gender. Study Design: The data were retrospectively analysed during a 17-year period: from 2000 to 2016. Materials and Methods: The study included 48 examinees who were suffering from syphilis and gonorrhoea. The data about the patients were extracted from the database of the Institute of Public Health of the Osijek-Baranya County. The author also used information found in the Croatian Scientific and Statistical Yearbooks for the years 2006 and 2016 as well as data from the 2001 and the 2011 census. The data were analysis according to age, gender and site field. Results: The incidence rate of syphilis in the Osijek-Baranja County in the period from 2000 to 2010 amounted to 3/100,000 and the incidence rate of gonorrhoea to 7.9/100,000. In the period from 2011 to 2016, the incidence rate of syphilis dropped to 1.6 patients per 100,000 inhabitants, and of gonorrhoea to 2.3/100,000. In the last 17 years, there has been a decrease in the incidence of syphilis and gonorrhea. Osijek is characterized by a lower incidence rate of syphilis and a higher incidence of gonorrhoea with respect to the rest of the County (epidemiological field offices in the Osijek-Baranja County). There are no statistically significant differences in the number of patients suffering from these two diseases between man and women, and between different age categories. Conclusion: The incidence of syphilis and gonorrhoea in the Osijek-Baranya County is declining. Better control of these diseases can be achieved with further, continuous monitoring and analysis of incidence tendencies

Talajminták vizsgálata Budapest XI. kerületének területéről környezetfizikai módszerekkel

Környezetünk komplex rendszert alkot, mely számos szférát foglal magában. A különböző szférák között aktív és passzív folyamatok, anyagtranszportok zajlanak. A szférák között kiemelt szerepet kap a pedoszféra, amely az összes többi szférával kölcsönhatásban áll és alapvetően meghatározza az élővilág és az ember életfeltételeit. Emiatt ezzel a szférával kiemelten kell foglalkozni, és nem csak a természetes környezetben, hanem az ember által erősen befolyásolt települési környezetben is. Mindezt az magyarázza, hogy ma a világ népességének több mint a fele (51-52%) városi környezetben él, ahol az ezzel járó infrastruktúra és a fenntartáshoz szükséges rendszerek folyamatos szennyező forrást jelentenek a városi környezetre. Ennek hatására nem csak a szennyezés mértéke nőtt, hanem a nagy népsűrűség miatt a potenciálisan veszélyeztetett népesség száma is. Jelenleg hazánk népességének 17,6%-a Budapesten, 51,8%-a egyéb városokban él (ANDREJCSIK et al., 2014). Budapest területe számos olyan potenciális szennyező forrással rendelkezik, melyek hathatnak a talajra. Közösségi szempontból idesorolható a közlekedés, kommunális hulladék, utak jégtelenítéséből származó anyagok, egyéni fűtés és aeroszol kibocsájtás. Ipari szempontból a különböző üzemek, csatornák, ipari létesítmények. A városi talajok vizsgálatát kiemelt feladattá teszi egy Budapesten mostanában elterjedő, új tevékenységforma, a városi kertészkedés, a közösségi kertek megjelenése és elterjedése. A városi talajok ebben az esetben mezőgazdasági szempontból, kiskerti növények termesztésekor kerülnek hasznosításra. Maga a törekvés segít a városi embereknek közelebb kerülni a természethez, és ezáltal segíti világnézetük, a természethez való viszonyuk fejlődését. Nem szabad megfeledkeznünk azonban arról, hogy például a toxikus fémekkel szennyezett talaj eseten az itt termesztett növények fajtól és anyagcserétől függően bioakuumuláció miatt komoly egészségre ártalmas hatással lehetnek (MOLNÁR, 2013). Magyarországon jelenleg legalább 28 aktív közösségi kert található, ebből 15 Budapesten (www.kozossegikertek.hu). Dolgozatomban Budapest XI. kerületéből származó városi talajmintákat vizsgálok (1. ábra), elsősorban toxikus fémtartalom alapján. Célom az, hogy általános képet nyújtsak a főváros legnépesebb kerületének talajszennyezettségéről, és felhívjam a döntéshozók figyelmét azokra a helyszínekre, ahol beavatkozás szükséges