Reading Speculative Futures in a Post-Truth World

Faced with the threat of a “post-truth” world and a widening chasm of exchange between climate change deniers and environmentalists, I argue that future-orientated literary and media speculative fictions—which I term “speculative futures”—offer a means of building lines of communication across social and political divisions. This thought piece on “The Environmental Humanities in a Post-Truth World” mediates upon the potentiality of speculative futures as theory, social bridge-building, and pedagogical tool. Speculative fictions (especially those that address environmental justice, and anti-colonial and feminist politics) use storytelling and future imaginaries to challenge political falsehoods and imagine more ecological, de-colonized futures

The PCSE Estimator is Good -- Just Not as Good as You Think

This paper investigates the properties of the Panel-Corrected Standard Error (PCSE) estimator. The PCSE estimator is commonly used when working with time-series, crosssectional (TSCS) data. In an influential paper, Beck and Katz (1995) (henceforth BK) demonstrated that FGLS produces coefficient standard errors that are severely underestimated. They report Monte Carlo experiments in which the PCSE estimator produces accurate standard error estimates at no, or little, loss in efficiency compared to FGLS. Our study further investigates the properties of the PCSE estimator. We first reproduce the main experimental results of BK using their Monte Carlo framework. We then show that the PCSE estimator does not perform as well when tested in data environments that better resemble “practical research situations.” When (i) the explanatory variable(s) are characterized by substantial persistence, (ii) there is serial correlation in the errors, and (iii) the time span of the data series is relatively short, coverage rates for the PCSE estimator frequently fall between 80 and 90 percent. Further, we find many “practical research situations” where the PCSE estimator compares poorly with FGLS on efficiency grounds.Panel data estimation; Monte Carlo analysis; FGLS; Parks; PCSE; finite sample

Estimating Standard Errors For The Parks Model: Can Jackknifing Help?

Non-spherical errors, namely heteroscedasticity, serial correlation and cross-sectional correlation are commonly present within panel data sets. These can cause significant problems for econometric analyses. The FGLS(Parks) estimator has been demonstrated to produce considerable efficiency gains in these settings. However, it suffers from underestimation of coefficient standard errors, oftentimes severe. Potentially, jackknifing the FGLS(Parks) estimator could allow one to maintain the efficiency advantages of FGLS(Parks) while producing more reliable estimates of coefficient standard errors. Accordingly, this study investigates the performance of the jackknife estimator of FGLS(Parks) using Monte Carlo experimentation. We find that jackknifing can -- in narrowly defined situations -- substantially improve the estimation of coefficient standard errors. However, its overall performance is not sufficient to make it a viable alternative to other panel data estimators.Panel Data estimation; Parks model; cross-sectional correlation; jackknife; Monte Carlo

Enhancing skin integrity: an interprofessional approach

Earlier this year the University of Huddersfield's Institute of Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention in association with the Journal of Wound Care (JWC) held the first International Skin Integrity and Infection Prevention Conference. The 2-day event consisted of a mix of keynotes, symposia and short presentations from key opinion leaders and post graduate research students. Here Professor Karen Ousey and Dr Rachel Webb present the highlights of this event

Front-loading Urban Stormwater Management for Success – A Perspective Incorporating Current Studies on the Implementation of Retrofit Low-impact Development

Recent work into the implementation of low-impact development (LID) suggests that a decentralized, source-control approach has the potential to significantly reduce urban stormwater runoff quantity. The practice of retrofit stormwater management is currently dominated by demonstration projects, and some additional momentum is required to spur adoption and upscaling of LID practices so that the scale of this management approach can better match the scale of disturbance. This momentum may be provided in part by targeted research into effectiveness of stormwater best management practices insofar as research accounts for cost and effectiveness (e.g., water quality benefits, and actual stormwater capture) under a variety of climate conditions. We posit that the factors of increasing public participation in stormwater management; engaging local agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs); application of proven source control methods to mitigate runoff formation; and science-based, comprehensive monitoring strategies are all important to the sustainable implementation of retrofit low-impact development. From the perspective of Federal researchers and local NGOs, this paper presents features, objectives, and costs of recent efforts to properly scale demonstration projects and broader LID initiatives. In order to realize the full benefits of decentralized LID stormwater management practices in urban and suburban areas, we conclude that a nexus must exist of a motivated and engaged citizenry, solid support from municipal and regional agencies, sound source control management practices, and follow-up monitoring to judge effectiveness

Functoriality and the Moduli of Sections, With Applications to Quasimaps

Motivated by Gromov-Witten theory, this thesis is about moduli of maps from curves to algebraic stacks, the obstruction theories of those moduli, and the functoriality of the stacks and their obstruction theories. The first part discusses the moduli of sections S of a map Z → C from an artin stack Z to a family of twisted curves C over a base algebraic stack. The existence and basic properties of S are due to Hall-Rydh; the new result in this thesis is that S has a canonical obstruction theory (not necessarily perfect), generalizing known constructions on Deligne-Mumford substacks of S. We also work out basic functoriality properties of S and its obstruction theory. The second part proves an abelianization formula for the quasimap I-function. That is, if Z is an affine l.c.i. variety with an action by a complex reductive group G such that the quotient Z//θG is a smooth projective variety, we relate the quasimap I-functions of Z//θG and Z//θ T where T is a maximal torus of G. With the mirror theorems of Ciocane-Fontantine and Kim, this computes the genus-zero Gromov-Witten invariants of Z//θG in good cases.PHDMathematicsUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/155204/1/webbra_1.pd