Analysis of energy consumption on the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis in the United States: does renewable energy play a role?

Thesis (M.S.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2018Using CO₂ emissions as a representation of environmental degradation an empirical econometric analysis is conducted to see if there is evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the United States and if renewable energy consumption plays a significant role in CO₂ emission mitigation. The renewable energy consumption variable was broken down further to isolate geothermal, hydroelectric, biomass, solar, and wind energy consumption and explore their role in the analysis. An Auto-Regressive Distributed Lag approach to cointegration with Pooled Mean Groups and Mean Groups estimations was used on U.S. state (including District of Columbia) specific data from 1987 to 2015 to calculate the long and short run results that would support an Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis. The panel of states was divided into low, medium, and high GDP brackets as disaggregate models and those were examined along with a model of the entire United States. Evidence for an Environmental Kuznets Curve for the United States could not be established in the aggregate model, however it was found that renewable energy consumption did have a negative coefficient, which indicates CO₂ emission mitigation through renewable energy consumption. Out of the individual renewable energy consumption variables tested, only wind energy consumption was found to be statistically significant while the model also exhibited evidence to support an Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis in this aggregate model. Looking at the different GDP state brackets, low GDP states were the only bracket that yielded evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve in the disaggregate models. For estimations with the low GDP states bracket looking at the individual renewable energy consumption variables, hydroelectric, biomass, solar, and wind energy consumption variables were statistically significant as well. The medium GDP bracket states aggregate model did not yield conclusive results, stemming from the lack of slope in the GDP variable for this model. Out of the individual renewable energy consumption variables tested in the subset, biomass was the only energy consumption to be statistically significant while the model exhibited evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. The high GDP bracket aggregate model did not yield results showing evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve, while the individual renewable energy consumption variable subset models geothermal and wind energy consumption were statistically significant within models showing evidence of an Environmental Kuznets Curve. Breaking out these separate renewable energy consumption variables in an Environmental Kuznets Curve analysis can provide empirical support for policy and investment in specific renewable energy technology

A Sensitivity Analysis on Oil and Gas Prices and How This Affects Sustainable Energy Implementation

A sensitivity analysis was performed to determine how variation of oil and gas prices affects the Net Present Value of sustainable energy technologies. The economic analysis was developed to determine if variations in fuel prices would alter a recommendation in a prior study of sustainable energy technology. Twenty five years of data was analyzed to determine the mean and to develop a sensitivity range of current fuel prices plus/minus one and two standard deviations. This created a range of five fuel prices in which the economic analysis, specifically Net Present Value, was performed. The results showed that most of the sustainable energy technologies that were recommended had Net Present Value responses proportionate to the change in fuel prices. In some cases, specifically a geothermal heat pump that was suggested in the prior study, this increase in fuel and gas prices increased the Net Present Value to become positive thus demonstrating that if we saw prices increase one standard deviation we would expect the geothermal to be a positive Net Present Value. This sensitivity analysis reflects how risks of errors in the forecast could be modelled to account for risks when performing an economic analysis, in turn making sustainable energy technologies more favorable to implement

Orthogonal Drug Pooling Enhances Phenotype-Based Discovery of Ocular Antiangiogenic Drugs in Zebrafish Larvae

Unbiased screening of large randomized chemical libraries in vivo is a powerful tool to find new drugs and targets. However, forward chemical screens in zebrafish can be time consuming and usually >99% of test compounds have no significant effect on the desired phenotype. Here, we sought to find bioactive drugs more efficiently and to comply with the 3R principles of replacement, reduction, and refinement of animals in research. We investigated if pooling of drugs to simultaneously test 8–10 compounds in zebrafish larvae can increase the screening efficiency of an established assay that identifies drugs inhibiting developmental angiogenesis in the eye. In a phenotype-based screen, we tested 1,760 small molecule compounds from the ChemBridge DIVERSet™ chemical library for their ability to inhibit the formation of distinct primary hyaloid vessels in the eye. Applying orthogonal pooling of the chemical library, we treated zebrafish embryos from 3 to 5 days post fertilization with pools of 8 or 10 compounds at 10 μM each. This reduced the number of tests from 1,760 to 396. In 63% of cases, treatment showed sub-threshold effects of <40% reduction of primary hyaloid vessels. From 18 pool hits, we identified eight compounds that reduce hyaloid vessels in the larval zebrafish eye by at least 40%. Compound 4-[4-(1H-benzimidazol-2-yl)phenoxy]aniline ranked as the most promising candidate with reproducible and dose-dependent effects. To our knowledge, this is the first report of a self-deconvoluting matrix strategy applied to drug screening in zebrafish. We conclude that the orthogonal drug pooling strategy is a cost-effective, time-saving, and unbiased approach to discover novel inhibitors of developmental angiogenesis in the eye. Ultimately, this approach may identify new drugs or targets to mitigate disease caused by pathological angiogenesis in the eye, e.g., diabetic retinopathy or age-related macular degeneration, wherein blood vessel growth and leaky vessels lead to vision impairment or clinical blindness

Improving the patient experience through consistent patient generated forms process

"Team Members: MU Pediatrics Faculty and Staff""We aim to decrease the incident of missing forms when parents arrive for pickup and consistent turnaround time of 3 business or less."--Aim statement

Ecological differences in the facultative Caribbean cleaning goby Elacatinus prochilos do not predict learning performance in discriminatory two-choice tasks

The ecological approach to comparative cognition emphasizes that the ecological and social environment are important predictors of cognitive performance. We used this approach to test whether differences in habitat use and social behavior in the facultative Caribbean cleaning goby Elacatinus prochilos predict differences in learning performance in two discriminatory two-choice tasks. This species has two behavioral ecotypes: one that frequently engages in cleaning interactions and inhabits corals in male–female pairs (cleaning gobies) and another that rarely engages in cleaning interactions and inhabits barrel sponges in large groups (sponge-dwellers). We predicted that cleaning gobies would outperform sponge-dwellers in a pattern-cued task, which consisted of identifying the pattern on a plate that consistently provided food, while sponge-dwellers would outperform cleaning gobies in a spatial task, which consisted of identifying the location of the plate. Contrary to our predictions, there was no difference in performance between the two ecotypes. Most of the gobies performed poorly in the pattern-cued task and well in the spatial task. A possible explanation for these results is that the association of a pattern with positive and negative reinforcement may not be a pre-requisite for engaging in cleaning interactions, while spatial skills might be equally required in both ecotypes. Alternatively, the two ecotypes can flexibly adjust to new feeding conditions, which would explain their similar performance in the spatial task. Further research should investigate which aspects of E. prochilos’ social and ecological environment might impose challenges that require spatial cognition and whether individuals can flexibly adjust to new habitats and feeding conditions

Artificial Intelligence in Public Discourse

This book contains 26 studies conducted by students in the Cognitive Science seminar "Artificial Intelligence in Public Discourse". In their studies, they explore the use of the term Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related subfields in various parts of public discourse such as Twitter, user comments on news sites, expert interviews, government documents, television shows, newspapers, etc. It is investigated which strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats are ascribed to AI technology and how this relates to the technical and academic state of the art and discussion. Most studies employ qualitative methods, but quantitative and mixed-methods approaches are also used