scholarly journals Singing in a silent spring: Birds respond to a half-century soundscape reversion during the COVID-19 shutdown

Science ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 370 (6516) ◽  
pp. 575-579 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth P. Derryberry ◽  
Jennifer N. Phillips ◽  
Graham E. Derryberry ◽  
Michael J. Blum ◽  
David Luther
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Motor Vehicle ◽  
Noise Pollution ◽  
Anthropogenic Pressures ◽  
Behavioral Traits ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
Acoustic Space ◽  
Favorable Conditions

Actions taken to control the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic have conspicuously reduced motor vehicle traffic, potentially alleviating auditory pressures on animals that rely on sound for survival and reproduction. Here, by comparing soundscapes and songs across the San Francisco Bay Area before and during the recent statewide shutdown, we evaluated whether a common songbird responsively exploited newly emptied acoustic space. We show that noise levels in urban areas were substantially lower during the shutdown, characteristic of traffic in the mid-1950s. We also show that birds responded by producing higher performance songs at lower amplitudes, effectively maximizing communication distance and salience. These findings illustrate that behavioral traits can change rapidly in response to newly favorable conditions, indicating an inherent resilience to long-standing anthropogenic pressures such as noise pollution.

Analysis of Freeway Improvements for Express Bus Service

2005 ◽  
Vol 1925 (1) ◽  
pp. 256-264 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Cherry ◽  
Eric Tang ◽  
Elizabeth Deakin ◽  
Alexander Skabardonis
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Operations Management ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Traffic Simulation ◽  
Simulation Models ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Bus Service ◽  
Preliminary Planning ◽  
Hov Lanes ◽  
Scenario Testing

In many urban areas, high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes have been provided to permit carpools and express buses to bypass congestion and offer a significant travel time advantage to commuters willing to share a ride or take transit. In many locations, however, HOV lanes are incomplete because of difficulties in securing right-of-way or funding. In other locations, because existing HOV lanes are underutilized, express buses are undersubscribed, or both, questions about their value arise. In this research it is shown how a PARAMICS microscopic traffic simulation model can be used to analyze proposed HOV lanes and their effects on express bus operation along an urban freeway corridor. A PARAMICS application is developed for Interstate 580 in the San Francisco Bay Area and used to test alternative ways of providing HOV lanes. The performance of the corridor is evaluated under plausible scenarios of traffic growth. Traffic simulation models are usually used for detailed operations management. The case study shows that traffic simulation can be an effective preliminary planning and scenario testing tool for evaluating the likely performance of an infrastructure or operations improvement on express bus service.

scholarly journals URBAN STRUCTURE OF THE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA IN THE CONTEXT OF FORMATION OF A NEW TYPE OF URBAN FABRIC

World Science ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (10(38)) ◽  
pp. 4-9
Author(s):  
Andriy Pavliv
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Rapid Development ◽  
Urban Structure ◽  
Urban Forms ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
New Type ◽  
Post Industrial

The purpose of this article is to outline the changes and phenomena within the urban planning structure of the San Francisco bay area, which can be interpreted as impulses associated with the emergence of new post-industrial urban forms. Formation of the theory of impulse modeling of an urban organism requires not only theoretical generalizations and study of the material relating to the peculiarities of the post-industrial (informational) era, but also the search for practical phenomena associated with the rapid development of certain urban areas. At the same time, such development should not be confused with the concept of polycentrism, which was formed during the period of modernism.

scholarly journals Open-Source Food: Nutrition, Toxicology, and Availability of Wild Edible Greens in the East Bay

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip B. Stark ◽  
Daphne Miller ◽  
Thomas J. Carlson ◽  
Kristen Rasmussen de Vasquez
Keyword(s):  
Heavy Metals ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Tap Water ◽  
Leafy Greens ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Lead And Cadmium ◽  
Nutrient Density ◽  
Mixed Use ◽  
East Bay

AbstractSignificanceForaged leafy greens are consumed around the globe, including in urban areas, and may play a larger role when food is scarce or expensive. It is thus important to assess the safety and nutritional value of wild greens foraged in urban environments.MethodsField observations, soil tests, and nutritional and toxicology tests on plant tissue were conducted for three sites, each roughly 9 square blocks, in disadvantaged neighborhoods in the East San Francisco Bay Area in 2014–2015. The sites included mixed-use areas and areas with high vehicle traffic.ResultsEdible wild greens were abundant, even during record droughts. Soil at some survey sites had elevated concentrations of lead and cadmium, but tissue tests suggest that rinsed greens of the tested species are safe to eat. Daily consumption of standard servings comprise less than the EPA reference doses of lead, cadmium, and other heavy metals. Pesticides, glyphosate, and PCBs were below detection limits.The nutrient density of 6 abundant species compared favorably to that of the most nutritious domesticated leafy greens.ConclusionsWild edible greens harvested in industrial, mixed-use, and high-traffic urban areas in the San Francisco East Bay area are abundant and highly nutritious. Even grown in soils with elevated levels of heavy metals, tested species were safe to eat after rinsing in tap water. This does not mean that all edible greens growing in contaminated soil are safe to eat—tests on more species, in more locations, and over a broader range of soil chemistry are needed to determine what is generally safe and what is not. But it does suggest that wild greens could contribute to nutrition, food security, and sustainability in urban ecosystems. Current laws, regulations, and public-health guidance that forbid or discourage foraging on public lands, including urban areas, should be revisited.

Diverted Mothering among American Indian Domestic Servants, 1920–1940

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret D. Jacobs
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
American West ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Domestic Service ◽  
Indian Women ◽  
Domestic Servants ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Case Files ◽  
Urban Leisure

This chapter focuses on young Indian women who took up domestic service in white women's households in urban areas of the American West. Most women found this work tedious and their employers imperious. In particular, many intensely disliked caring for white women's children. However, despite the oppressive nature of domestic service, many Indian women gravitated to these jobs in urban areas where they formed a vibrant social network with other Indian youth and reveled in modern urban leisure pursuits. While in service, many young Indian women became pregnant out of wedlock and then confronted a dilemma about how to mother their own children while earning a living as domestics and caretakers of other children. Examining the case files of ninety-seven Indian domestic servants in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1920 and 1940, the chapter considers the ways in which Indian women's paid work as domestic servants often undermined their unpaid culturally reproductive work as mothers.

Modeling Framework for Estimating Emissions in Large Urban Areas

1997 ◽  
Vol 1587 (1) ◽  
pp. 85-95 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander Skabardonis
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Travel Demand ◽  
Planning System ◽  
Area Network ◽  
Modeling Framework ◽  
Driving Mode ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Demand Models ◽  
Vehicle Activity

A modeling framework has been developed to produce detailed emission inventories for large urban areas. Relationships were developed between the time spent in each driving mode (cruise, acceleration, deceleration, and idle) and basic link characteristics based on simulations of selected real-world surface street networks and freeway sections using the TRAF-NETSIM and INTRAS microscopic models, supplemented by field data. These relationships were then incorporated into a specially written computer program as a postprocessor to the Urban Transportation Planning System type of four-step travel demand models. The integrated model was successfully applied to the 1,120-zone Metropolitan Transportation Commission San Francisco Bay Area network to generate vehicle activity estimates.

scholarly journals Potential Urban Air Mobility Travel Time Savings: An Exploratory Analysis of Munich, Paris, and San Francisco

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2217
Author(s):  
Raoul Rothfeld ◽  
Mengying Fu ◽  
Miloš Balać ◽  
Constantinos Antoniou
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Metropolitan Region ◽  
Process Time ◽  
Base Case ◽  
Urban Air ◽  
Travel Times ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Travel Time Savings ◽  
Distributed Propulsion

The advent of electrified, distributed propulsion in vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft promises aerial passenger transport within, into, or out of urban areas. Urban air mobility (UAM), i.e., the on-demand concept that utilizes eVTOL aircraft, might substantially reduce travel times when compared to ground-based transportation. Trips of three, pre-existent, and calibrated agent-based transport scenarios (Munich Metropolitan Region, Île-de-France, and San Francisco Bay Area) have been routed using the UAM-extension for the multi-agent transport simulation (MATSim) to calculate congested trip travel times for each trip’s original mode—i.e., car or public transport (PT)—and UAM. The resulting travel times are compared and allow the deduction of potential UAM trip shares under varying UAM properties, such as the number of stations, total process time, and cruise flight speed. Under base-case conditions, the share of motorized trips for which UAM would reduce the travel times ranges between 3% and 13% across the three scenarios. Process times and number of stations heavily influence these potential shares, where the vast majority of UAM trips would be below 50 km in range. Compared to car usage, UAM’s (base case) travel times are estimated to be competitive beyond the range of a 50-minute car ride and are less than half as much influenced by congestion.

A Qualitative Study of Ecstasy Sellers in the San Francisco Bay Area

2004 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheigla Murphy ◽  
Paloma Sales ◽  
Micheline Duterte ◽  
Camille Jacinto
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Study ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Bay Area

The “Japanese Turn” in Fine Dining in the United States, 1980–2020

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-54
Author(s):  
Samuel H. Yamashita
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
First Century ◽  
Further Training ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Wide Acceptance

In the 1970s, Japanese cooks began to appear in the kitchens of nouvelle cuisine chefs in France for further training, with scores more arriving in the next decades. Paul Bocuse, Alain Chapel, Joël Robuchon, and other leading French chefs started visiting Japan to teach, cook, and sample Japanese cuisine, and ten of them eventually opened restaurants there. In the 1980s and 1990s, these chefs' frequent visits to Japan and the steady flow of Japanese stagiaires to French restaurants in Europe and the United States encouraged a series of changes that I am calling the “Japanese turn,” which found chefs at fine-dining establishments in Los Angeles, New York City, and later the San Francisco Bay Area using an ever-widening array of Japanese ingredients, employing Japanese culinary techniques, and adding Japanese dishes to their menus. By the second decade of the twenty-first century, the wide acceptance of not only Japanese ingredients and techniques but also concepts like umami (savory tastiness) and shun (seasonality) suggest that Japanese cuisine is now well known to many American chefs.

Cyborg Jotería Pedagogies: Latinx Drag Queens Leveraging Communication Ecologies in the Age of the Digital and Social Displacement

2020 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 44-66
Author(s):  
José Ramón Lizárraga ◽  
Arturo Cortez
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
Digital Technologies ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Drag Queen ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
Online Presence ◽  
Drag Queens

Researchers and practitioners have much to learn from drag queens, specifically Latinx queens, as they leverage everyday queerness and brownness in ways that contribute to pedagogy locally and globally, individually and collectively. Drawing on previous work examining the digital queer gestures of drag queen educators (Lizárraga & Cortez, 2019), this essay explores how non-dominant people that exist and fluctuate in the in-between of boundaries of gender, race, sexuality, the physical, and the virtual provide pedagogical overtures for imagining and organizing for new possible futures that are equitable and just. Further animated by Donna Haraway’s (2006) influential feminist post-humanist work, we interrogate how Latinx drag queens as cyborgs use digital technologies to enhance their craft and engage in powerful pedagogical moves. This essay draws from robust analyses of the digital presence of and interviews with two Latinx drag queens in the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as the online presence of a Xicanx doggie drag queen named RuPawl. Our participants actively drew on their liminality to provoke and mobilize communities around socio-political issues. In this regard, we see them engaging in transformative public cyborg jotería pedagogies that are made visible and historicized in the digital and physical world.

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