scholarly journals Hot and cold spots in the US research: A spatial analysis of bibliometric data on the institutional level

2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 84-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lutz Bornmann ◽  
Felix de Moya Angeon
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Hot Spots ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Bibliometric Data ◽  
Research Activities ◽  
The Us ◽  
Z Scores

Spatial bibliometrics addresses the spatial aspects of scientific research activities. In this case study, we use the Getis–Ord G∗ i ( d) statistic for bibliometric data on US institutions to identify hot spots of institutions on a map publishing many high-impact papers. The study is based on a dataset with performance data (proportion and number of papers belonging to the 10% most frequently cited papers) and geo-coordinates for all institutions in the United States from the SCImago group (and Scopus). The Getis-Ord Gi* statistic returns, for each institution on a map, a z score. Higher z scores point to intense clustering of institutions, which have published a large proportion or number of highly cited papers (hot spots). The US maps, which we generate as examples in this study, point to four regions. These regions can be labelled as hot spots: around San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston and Washington, DC. The empirical focus on institutional hot spots in a country using bibliometric data is of specific importance for science policy, because geospatial proximity is shown as an important factor for innovation processes.

The Controversial History of the Goose Lake, California, Meteorite

2012 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-246 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Plotkin ◽  
Roy Clarke
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
National Forest ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
National Museum ◽  
Private Land ◽  
Federal Lands ◽  
The Us ◽  
History Of

The Goose Lake meteorite, a 2,573 lb (1,167 kg) iron, was found by three deer hunters on lava beds in the Modoc National Forest in northeast California in October, 1938. Although several California persons wanted possession of the meteorite for various California institutions, under the powers of the 1906 Antiquities Act meteorites found on US federal lands were typically transferred to the US National Museum at the Smithsonian Institution and accessioned into the National Collection of Meteorites. With authorization from the US Department of Agriculture, the Smithsonian began a correspondence with one of the meteorite's finders to arrange for its retrieval. But the situation became complicated and controversial when meteorite collector/dealer Harvey H. Nininger (1887-1986), who harboured hopes that the meteorite might be on a parcel of private land in the National Forest, falsely presented himself to the finder as a Smithsonian agent, and was taken to the site of the meteorite. A survey showed the meteorite was on federal land, however, and the Smithsonian reluctantly allowed Nininger to oversee its recovery. During the time that the meteorite was on loan from the Smithsonian and on exhibit at the San Francisco World's Fair, considerable pressure from various California individuals and institutions was put on the Smithsonian to keep the meteorite in California, but it was accessioned into the Smithsonian's National Collection of Meteorites and shipped to Washington, DC. The controversial history of the Goose Lake meteorite affirmed the applicability of the Antiquities Act with regard to the disposition of meteorites found on US federal lands, and set the stage for the later court rulings involving the Old Woman meteorite, a large (2,753 kg) iron found on government land in California in 1976. Problematic ownership issues like those involving the Goose Lake meteorite exist in other countries besides the United States, and in other branches of natural history, especially paleontology. The Goose Lake meteorite is famous for its numerous and enigmatic large holes and cavities, and is a popular attraction at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC.

scholarly journals Ultrafine Particulate Matter Source Contributions across the Continental United States

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa A. Venecek ◽  
Xin Yu ◽  
Michael J. Kleeman
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Particulate Matter ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
The United States ◽  
Biomass Combustion ◽  
Spatial Gradients ◽  
The Us ◽  
Ultrafine Particulate Matter ◽  
Pollution Episodes

Abstract. The regional concentration of airborne ultrafine particulate matter mass (Dp < 0.1 µm; PM0.1) was predicted with 4 km resolution in 39 cities across the United States during summer time air pollution episodes. Calculations were performed using a regional chemical transport model with 4 km spatial resolution operating on the National Emissions Inventory created by the US EPA. Measured source profiles for particle size and composition between 0.01–10 µm were used to translate PM total mass to PM0.1. PM0.1 concentrations exceeded 2 µg m-3 during summer pollution episodes in major urban regions across the US including Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Houston, Miami, and New York. PM0.1 spatial gradients were sharper than PM2.5 spatial gradients due to the dominance of primary aerosol in PM0.1. Artificial source tags were used to track contributions to primary PM0.1 and PM2.5 from fifteen source categories. As expected, on-road gasoline and diesel vehicles made significant contributions to regional PM0.1 in all 39 cities even though peak contributions within 0.3 km of the roadway were not resolved by the 4 km grid cells. Food cooking also made significant contributions to PM0.1 in all cities but biomass combustion was only important in locations impacted by summer wildfires. Aviation was a significant source of PM0.1 in cities that had airports within their urban footprints. Industrial sources including cement manufacturing, process heating, steel foundries, and paper &amp; pulp processing impacted their immediate vicinity but did not significantly contribute to PM0.1 concentrations in any of the target 39 cities. Natural gas combustion made significant contributions to PM0.1 concentrations due to the widespread use of this fuel for electricity generation, industrial applications, residential, and commercial use. The major sources of primary PM0.1 and PM2.5 were notably different in many cities. Future epidemiological studies may be able to differentiate PM0.1 and PM2.5 health effects by contrasting cities with different ratios of PM0.1 / PM2.5. In the current study, cities with higher PM0.1 / PM2.5 ratios include Houston TX, Los Angeles CA, Birmingham AL, Charlotte NC, and Bakersfield CA. Cities with lower PM0.1 to PM2.5 ratios include Lake Charles LA, Baton Rouge LA, St. Louis MO, Baltimore MD, and Washington DC.

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.

scholarly journals Examining the Economic and Environmental Impacts of COVID-19 Using Earth Observation Data

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 5
Author(s):  
William Straka ◽  
Shobha Kondragunta ◽  
Zigang Wei ◽  
Hai Zhang ◽  
Steven D. Miller ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Air Quality ◽  
Los Angeles ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Demographic Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Earth Observation ◽  
Observation Data ◽  
Washington Dc ◽  
Mobility Data ◽  
Earth Observation Data

The COVID-19 pandemic has infected almost 73 million people and is responsible for over 1.63 million fatalities worldwide since early December 2019, when it was first reported in Wuhan, China. In the early stages of the pandemic, social distancing measures, such as lockdown restrictions, were applied in a non-uniform way across the world to reduce the spread of the virus. While such restrictions contributed to flattening the curve in places like Italy, Germany, and South Korea, it plunged the economy in the United States to a level of recession not seen since WWII, while also improving air quality due to the reduced mobility. Using daily Earth observation data (Day/Night Band (DNB) from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Suomi-NPP and NO2 measurements from the TROPOspheric Monitoring Instrument TROPOMI) along with monthly averaged cell phone derived mobility data, we examined the economic and environmental impacts of lockdowns in Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; Washington DC from February to April 2020—encompassing the most profound shutdown measures taken in the U.S. The preliminary analysis revealed that the reduction in mobility involved two major observable impacts: (i) improved air quality (a reduction in NO2 and PM2.5 concentration), but (ii) reduced economic activity (a decrease in energy consumption as measured by the radiance from the DNB data) that impacted on gross domestic product, poverty levels, and the unemployment rate. With the continuing rise of COVID-19 cases and declining economic conditions, such knowledge can be combined with unemployment and demographic data to develop policies and strategies for the safe reopening of the economy while preserving our environment and protecting vulnerable populations susceptible to COVID-19 infection.

Riding the Waves of (Post)Colonial Migrancy: Are We All Really in the Same Boat?

1998 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-51
Author(s):  
Carule Fabricant
Keyword(s):  
Los Angeles ◽  
Postcolonial Theory ◽  
The United States ◽  
News Article ◽  
Container Ship ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Us ◽  
Port Of Los Angeles ◽  
To Come ◽  
Car Accident

I would like to begin by juxtaposing two very different pictures of global travel taken from recent articles in the popular media and considering their implications both for contemporary postcolonial theory and for our readings of “third world” fictional texts. In one article from the summer of 1997 (Newton 6-7), the Los Angeles New Times displayed on its cover a slender man in his thirties staring hopelessly out from behind a barred window. The caption read: “No Way Out: Romanian Gavrila Moldovan Risked His Life to Come to America. The INS Promptly Locked Him Up on Terminal Island. Three and a Half Years Later, He’s Still in Jail.” The accompanying story described Moldovan’s desperate flight out of Romania after being declared a “noncitizen” for writing an anti-government news article, which rendered him vulnerable to immediate arrest, and after his parents died in a suspicious car “accident.” Having slipped aboard a container ship bound for the United States together with some fellow countrymen (three of whom died en route), he was discovered and unceremoniously dumped ashore in Panama, only to stow away shortly thereafter on another container ship headed for the Port of Los Angeles. After finally reaching his destination, a “euphoric” Moldovan explained to the US authorities awaiting him at the port: “I come here to be in freedom.... ’” His “welcome” consisted of being arrested and locked up in the INS Processing Center on Terminal Island, in which, though never charged with any crime, he remained for several years before being transferred to Kern County Jail in Bakersfield, where he is currently languishing amongst a population of men awaiting trial for serious crimes (6-7)—one of thousands of refugees and immigrants who have been, and continue to be, incarcerated in prisons that have contracts with the INS, for lack of proper documents, for minor infringements of the law, or because they are denied political asylum despite compelling evidence of their vulnerability to government reprisal at home.

scholarly journals The case for Pacific media reform to reflect island communities

2005 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-35
Author(s):  
Kalafi Moala
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
San Francisco Bay ◽  
San Francisco Bay Area ◽  
The United States ◽  
Daily News ◽  
Bay Area ◽  
The Us ◽  
Island Communities ◽  
The Media

"The largest number of Tongans outside of Tonga lives in the United States. It is estimated to be more than 70,000; most live in the San Francisco Bay Area. On several occasions during two visits to the US by my wife and I during 2004, we met workers who operate the only daily Tongan language radio programmes in San Francisco. Our organisation supplies the daily news broadcast for their programmes. Our newspapers— in the Tongan and Samoan languages— also sell in the area. The question of what are the fundamental roles of the media came up in one of our discussions..."

scholarly journals Family Matters: Claiming Rights across the US-Mexico Migratory System

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jacqueline Maria Hagan ◽  
Ricardo Martinez-Schuldt ◽  
Alyssa Peavey ◽  
Deborah M. Weissman
Keyword(s):  
San Francisco ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Legal Protection ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Separation ◽  
Return Migrants ◽  
The Us ◽  
Binational Families ◽  
Us Immigration ◽  
Family Unity

The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 (INA) created an immigration system favoring the immigration of spouses, children, and parents of US citizens, thereby establishing family unity as the cornerstone of US immigration policy. Despite this historical emphasis on family unity, backlogs and limited visas for non-immediate relatives of US citizens and legal permanent residents, the militarization of the US-Mexico border, punitive measures for those who enter without inspection, such as the forced separation of children from their parents at the US border, and an aggressive policy of deportation have made it more difficult for members of Mexican binational families to unify. How do members of Mexican binational families manage the hardships that result from US immigration policies that prolong and force family separation? Immigrants and return migrants alike may not be aware of their rights and the legal remedies that exist to enforce them. Structural barriers such as poverty, legal status, fear of deportation, lack of proficiency in English, and lack of familiarity with government bureaucracies no doubt prevent many migrants in the United States and return migrants in Mexico from coming forward to request legal assistance and relief in the courts. Despite these barriers, when it comes to family matters, members of some Mexican binational families can and do assert their rights. In this article, we analyze an administrative database of the Department of Legal Protection of the Mexican consular network that documents migrant legal claims resulting from family separation, along with findings from 21 interviews with consular staff and community organizations in three consular jurisdictions — El Paso, Raleigh, and San Francisco — to investigate the sociolegal processes of claims. Our investigation centers on the mediating role the Mexican state — via its consular network — has developed to assist binational families as they attempt to assert their rights and resolve child support and child custody problems resulting from prolonged and forced family separation. We find that the resolution of binational family claims in part depends on the institutional infrastructure that has developed at local, state, and federal levels, along with the commitment and capacity of the receiving and sending states and the binational structures they establish. These binational structures transcend the limitations of national legal systems to achieve and implement family rights and obligations across borders.

Remember the Ladies: Competition and Mobilization in the United States

2018 ◽  
pp. 83-132
Author(s):  
Dawn Langan Teele
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Political Geography ◽  
Gilded Age ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Us ◽  
Race Ethnicity

This chapter presents a case study of women's enfranchisement in the United States. It argues that the formation of a broad coalition of women, symbolized by growing membership in a large non-partisan suffrage organization, in combination with competitive conditions in state legislatures, was crucial to securing politicians' support for women's suffrage in the states. The chapter first gives a broad overview of the phases of the US suffrage movement, arguing that the salience of political cleavages related to race, ethnicity, nativity, and class influenced the type of movement suffragists sought to build. It then describes the political geography of the Gilded Age, showing how the diversity of political competition and party organization that characterized the several regions mirrors the pattern of women's enfranchisement across the states.

Development of the Medical Interpreting Profession in the US

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Holly M. Mikkelson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Labor Market ◽  
The United States ◽  
Role Of Government ◽  
The Us ◽  
Medical Interpreters ◽  
Medical Interpreting ◽  
Further Development

This chapter traces the development of the medical interpreting profession in the United States as a case study. It begins with the conception of interpreters as volunteer helpers or dual-role medical professionals who happened to have some knowledge of languages other than English. Then it examines the emergence of training programs for medical interpreters, incipient efforts to impose standards by means of certification tests, the role of government in providing language access in health care, and the beginning of a labor market for paid medical interpreters. The chapter concludes with a description of the current situation of professional medical interpreting in the United States, in terms of training, certification and the labor market, and makes recommendations for further development.

The Paradox Resolved: A Different Case Study and the Argument Summarized

2002 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel J. G. van Eeten ◽  
Emery Roe
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The Netherlands ◽  
Cultural Values ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Ecosystem Management ◽  
The United States ◽  
Service Reliability ◽  
Sustainable Housing ◽  
Study Approach

From the outset, the book’s chief policy question has resolved around the problem of how to manage. As this was addressed in the preceding chapters, a new question arises: what are the implications for policies governing the meeting of the twofold management goal of restoring ecosystems while maintaining service reliability? This chapter provides our answer to that question by means of a new case study. It sums up the book’s argument and recasts ecosystem management and policy for ecologists, engineers, and other stakeholders. The best way to draw out the policy-relevant ramifications of our framework and the preceding management insights is to apply them to a different ecosystem. The case-study approach has served us well in contextualizing management recommendations without, we believe, compromising their more general application to ecosystem management. Our analysis of the major land-use planning controversy in the Netherlands underscores the wider applicability of this book’s arguments for both management and policy. What follows is put more briefly because it builds on the analysis of and recommendations for the Columbia River Basin, San Francisco Bay-Delta, and the Everglades. Why the Netherlands? There are human-dominated ecosystems substantially different from those found in the United States, many of which are more densely populated. They have nothing remotely like “wilderness,” but instead long histories of constructing and managing “nature.” The Netherlands is one such landscape. Not only is the landscape different, it is also important to note that the context for ecosystem management is set by different political, social, and cultural values. Sustainability is a much more dominant value in the European context than currently in the United States. Case-by-case management, while also appropriate for zones of conflict outside the United States, now has to deal with the fact that there is a tension between its call for case-specific indicators and the use of more general sustainability indicators in Europe. In die Netherlands, for example, sustainable housing projects are designed and assessed not only in terms of specific indicators but also in light of the “factor 20 increase in environmental efficiency” needed to achieve sustainability.

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