An equitable alternative to conventional agriculture? Discourses of whiteness and color-blind racism in local foods systems

There has been an increasing volume of scholarship and activism that positions local foods systems as a more equitable alternative to the globalized agrifood system. One of the key assumptions that informs local foods activism and scholarship is that localism addresses the injustices associated with the placeless globalized industrial agrifood system. As a result, a discourse has emerged that assumes the local to be a site of social, economic, and environmental justice. Though many local food movement participants presume local food systems to be more economically, socially, and environmentally just than the conventional globalized agricultural system, narratives of whiteness and color-blind racism within the local foods movement permeate the movement’s collective discourse. This research examines movement discourses evoked by active, engaged participants across the local food systems movement, and how discourses evoked demonstrate hegemonic whiteness and color-blind racism. Further, examples of subversion, struggle, and rejection of whitened discourses are provided. Data analyzed in this paper includes utterances data from practitioners, researchers, farmers, advocates, activists, and more from in-depth semi-structured interviews. I argue that a critique of white privilege within our local foods movements and a disruption of “local means equitable” is necessary to build sustainable agrifood movements that dismantle injustices typically associated with the globalized agrifood system

A discrete element method representation of an anisotropic elastic continuum

A method for modeling cubically anisotropic elasticity within the discrete element method is presented. The discrete element method (DEM) is an approach originally intended for modeling granular materials (sand, soil, and powders); however, recent developments have usefully extended it to model stochastic mechanical processes in monolithic solids which, to date, have been assumed to be elastically isotropic. The method presented here for efficiently capturing cubic elasticity in DEM is an important prerequisite for further extending DEM to capture the influence of elastic anisotropy on the mechanical response of polycrystals, composites, etc. The system demonstrated here uses a directionally assigned stiffness in the bonds between adjacent elements and includes separate schemes for achieving anisotropy with Zener ratios greater and smaller than one. The model framework is presented along with an analysis of the accessible space of elastic properties that can be modeled and an artificial neural network interpolation scheme for mapping input parameters to model elastic behavior

Funding Opportunities in Local Foods

This study presents information about 31 federal, state and private grant programs that are available as funding sources for development of local food systems. The summary includes name of the program, general eligibility and deadlines, and website links for further details

Discerning nuclear pairing properties from magnetic dipole excitation

Pairing correlation of Cooper pair is a fundamental property of multi-fermion interacting systems. For nucleons, two modes of the Cooper-pair coupling may exist, namely of $S_{12}=0$ with $L_{12}=0$ (spin-singlet s-wave) and $S_{12}=1$ with $L_{12}=1$ (spin-triplet p-wave). In nuclear physics, it has been an open question whether the spin-singlet or spin-triplet coupling is dominant, as well as how to measure their role. We investigate a relation between the magnetic-dipole (M1) excitation of nuclei and the pairing modes within the framework of relativistic nuclear energy-density functional (RNEDF). The pairing correlations are taken into account by the relativistic Hartree-Bogoliubov (RHB) model in the ground state, and the relativistic quasi-particle random-phase approximation (RQRPA) is employed to describe M1 transitions. We have shown that M1 excitation properties display a sensitivity on the pairing model involved in the calculations. The systematic evaluation of M1 transitions together with the accurate experimental data enables us to discern the pairing properties in finite nuclei.Comment: 5 pages, 6 figure

Nuclear Rocket Test Facility Decommissioning Including Controlled Explosive Demolition of a Neutron-Activated Shield Wall

Located in Area 25 of the Nevada Test Site, the Test Cell A Facility was used in the 1960s for the testing of nuclear rocket engines, as part of the Nuclear Rocket Development Program. The facility was decontaminated and decommissioned (D&D) in 2005 using the Streamlined Approach For Environmental Restoration (SAFER) process, under the Federal Facilities Agreement and Consent Order (FFACO). Utilities and process piping were verified void of contents, hazardous materials were removed, concrete with removable contamination decontaminated, large sections mechanically demolished, and the remaining five-foot, five-inch thick radiologically-activated reinforced concrete shield wall demolished using open-air controlled explosive demolition (CED). CED of the shield wall was closely monitored and resulted in no radiological exposure or atmospheric release