Assessing the potential for restoration of surface permeability for permeable pavements through maintenance

2013 ◽  
Vol 68 (9) ◽  
pp. 1950-1958 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Drake ◽  
Andrea Bradford
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Management Systems ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Partial Restoration ◽  
Permeable Pavements ◽  
Infiltration Rates ◽  
Surface Permeability ◽  
Equipment Testing ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Overall Effectiveness

Permeable pavements (PPs) have been in use as stormwater management systems in Canada and the United States for over 20 years. After years of exposure to sediment and debris build-up, surface clogging reduces the infiltration of stormwater and inhibits the hydraulic and environmental functions of the pavement. Removal of surface material has been shown to restore infiltration but the majority of studies have been limited to small-scale testing. This paper presents the results of small- and full-sized equipment testing aimed at restoring surface permeability, including the first testing of regenerative-air and vacuum-sweeping streetsweepers in Ontario. Maintenance achieved partial restoration of PP surface permeability. Post-treatment surface infiltration rates displayed large spatial variability, highlighting that localized conditions throughout the pavement have a confounding influence on the overall effectiveness of maintenance. The impact of maintenance may be improved by establishing regular cleaning intervals and developing instructional guidelines for pavement owners and equipment operators.

scholarly journals The Impact of Center-Based Childcare Attendance on Early Child Development: Evidence From the French Elfe Cohort

Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lawrence M. Berger ◽  
Lidia Panico ◽  
Anne Solaz
Keyword(s):  
Child Development ◽  
Motor Skills ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Positive Impact ◽  
Language Skills ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
High Quality ◽  
Disadvantaged Children ◽  
The Impact

Abstract Proponents of early childhood education and care programs cite evidence that high-quality center-based childcare has positive impacts on child development, particularly for disadvantaged children. However, much of this evidence stems from randomized evaluations of small-scale intensive programs based in the United States and other Anglo/English-speaking countries. Evidence is more mixed with respect to widespread or universal center-based childcare provision. In addition, most evidence is based on childcare experiences of 3- to 5-year-old children; less is known about the impact of center-based care in earlier childhood. The French context is particularly suited to such interrogation because the majority of French children who attend center-based care do so in high-quality, state-funded, state-regulated centers, known as crèches, and before age 3. We use data from a large, nationally representative French birth cohort, the Étude Longitudinale Français depuis l'Enfance (Elfe), and an instrumental variables strategy that leverages exogenous variation in both birth quarter and local crèche supply to estimate whether crèche attendance at age 1 has an impact on language, motor skills, and child behavior at age 2. Results indicate that crèche attendance has a positive impact on language skills, no impact on motor skills, and a negative impact on behavior. Moreover, the positive impact on language skills is particularly concentrated among disadvantaged children. This implies that facilitating increased crèche access among disadvantaged families may hold potential for decreasing early socioeconomic disparities in language development and, given the importance of early development for later-life outcomes, thereby have an impact on long-term population inequalities.

scholarly journals Influence of Mesonet Observations on the Accuracy of Surface Analyses Generated by an Ensemble Kalman Filter

2013 ◽  
Vol 28 (3) ◽  
pp. 815-841 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kent H. Knopfmeier ◽  
David J. Stensrud
Keyword(s):  
Kalman Filter ◽  
Ensemble Kalman Filter ◽  
Numerical Models ◽  
Spatial Scales ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Mesoscale Variability ◽  
Observational Dataset ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Meteorological Analysis

Abstract The expansion of surface mesoscale networks (mesonets) across the United States provides a high-resolution observational dataset for meteorological analysis and prediction. To clarify the impact of mesonet data on the accuracy of surface analyses, 2-m temperature, 2-m dewpoint, and 10-m wind analyses for 2-week periods during the warm and cold seasons produced through an ensemble Kalman filter (EnKF) approach are compared to surface analyses created by the Real-Time Mesoscale Analysis (RTMA). Results show in general a similarity between the EnKF analyses and the RTMA, with the EnKF exhibiting a smoother appearance with less small-scale variability. Root-mean-square (RMS) innovations are generally lower for temperature and dewpoint from the RTMA, implying a closer fit to the observations. Kinetic energy spectra computed from the two analyses reveal that the EnKF analysis spectra match more closely to the spectra computed from observations and numerical models in earlier studies. Data-denial experiments using the EnKF completed for the first week of the warm and cold seasons, as well as for two periods characterized by high mesoscale variability within the experimental domain, show that mesonet data removal imparts only minimal degradation to the analyses. This is because of the localized background covariances computed for the four surface variables having spatial scales much larger than the average spacing of mesonet stations. Results show that removing 75% of the mesonet observations has only minimal influence on the analysis.

scholarly journals Effect of Environment on Survival of Eggplant, Pepper, and Tomato in a Small-scale Healing Chamber

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 668-675 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fairuz A. Buajaila ◽  
Pinki Devi ◽  
Carol A. Miles
Keyword(s):  
Healing Process ◽  
Survival Rates ◽  
Solanum Melongena ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Crop Type ◽  
Number Of Leaves ◽  
Survival And Growth ◽  
Grafted Transplants ◽  
The Impact

Many small-scale vegetable growers in the United States who graft their own vegetable transplants use healing chambers inside a greenhouse to heal their grafted plants. Under these conditions, light and relative humidity (RH) can fluctuate during the healing process, and growers need more research-based information regarding the impact of these factors on the survival of grafted transplants. To address this need, this study investigated the effect of different targeted levels of light (0%, 25%, and 50%) and RH (50% and 100%) (six combinations) in a small-scale healing chamber within a greenhouse, where the healing chamber was opened for increasing periods of time for 8 days, at which time plants were fully exposed to greenhouse conditions. The survival and growth of self-grafted eggplant (Solanum melongena), pepper (Capsicum annuum), and tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) were measured up to 25 days post grafting. Percent light in the closed healing chambers was similar for the 50% and 100% RH levels of each light treatment. When the healing chambers were closed, compared with the greenhouse, there was 0.1% light in the 0% light treatments, 25% light on average in the 25% light treatments, and 43% light on average in the 50% light treatments. On days 2 to 5 after grafting, when chambers were opened up to 1 hour, average RH in the healing chambers was 96% to 98% for the 100% RH treatments, and was 42% to 49% for the 50% RH treatments. On days 6 and 7, when chambers were opened for 3 to 8 hours, RH was 79% to 82% for the 100% RH treatments, and was 39% to 46% for the 50% RH treatments. Survival of grafted plants following healing was greatest when the healing chamber treatment was 100% RH and 50% or 25% light (95% and 90% survival, respectively), and plant survival with these two treatments did not significantly decline from 11 to 21 days after grafting, indicating plants were fully healed and acclimated when they were removed from the healing chambers on day 8. At 22 to 25 days following grafting, plants healed with 100% RH and 50% or 25% light had greater plant height, number of leaves per plant, and stem diameter than plants healed in the other light and RH combinations. SPAD reading and nitrate-nitrogen of fresh petiole sap were unaffected by any of the healing treatments tested in this experiment, or by crop type. Tomato and pepper had 14% greater survival rates on average than eggplant at all measurement dates, while tomato tended to have greater plant growth, followed by eggplant and pepper. Additional research is needed to improve survival of grafted eggplant.

scholarly journals The Impact of Message Source on the Effectiveness of Communications About Climate Change

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 464-487 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Bolsen ◽  
Risa Palm ◽  
Justin T. Kingsland
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Republican Party ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Military Leaders ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Message Source ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Overall Effectiveness

We conducted a survey experiment in which we presented 1,850 respondents with one of two versions of an appeal emphasizing either the threats to the environment or threats to national security of the United States as a result of climate change. The messages were attributed to one of four sources: Republican Party leaders, Democratic Party leaders, military officials, or climate scientists. The results reveal that messages attributed to military leaders, or to Republican Party leaders, can enhance the impact of the appeal. This finding underscores the importance that the source of any communication can have on its overall effectiveness.

“How Do We Write about This?” The Domestic and the Global in the Post-9/11 Novel

2011 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 717-731 ◽  
Author(s):  
CATHERINE MORLEY
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Middle East ◽  
American Literature ◽  
The United States ◽  
Terrorist Attacks ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
American Fiction ◽  
The Impact

This article argues that far from marking a break in recent literary development, the terrorist attacks of 9/11 made less of an impact on American fiction than we often think. Critics have often accused writers after 9/11 of “retreating” into the domestic; in fact, domestic and individual narratives, often set against sweeping historical backgrounds, already dominated American writing in the late 1990s. At first, therefore, novelists handling the events of 9/11 framed them within the personal and the small-scale. In the last two years, however, writers such as Adam Haslett and Jonathan Franzen have begun publishing broader, more ambitious state-of-the-nation novels, explicitly addressing the United States' relationship with the Middle East and the impact of globalization. Yet in these novels, too, the global and the personal are tightly intertwined; again and again, writers are drawn to the domestic themes that have so often dominated American literature.

scholarly journals Estimates of cases and hospitalizations averted by COVID-19 case investigation and contact tracing in 14 health jurisdictions in the United States

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Seonghye Jeon ◽  
Gabriel Rainisch ◽  
Ryan Lash ◽  
Patrick K Moonan ◽  
John E Oeltmann ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Contact Tracing ◽  
Case Investigation ◽  
Percentage Points ◽  
Control And Prevention ◽  
Trained Staff ◽  
Nonpharmaceutical Interventions ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Overall Effectiveness ◽  
Do So

Context: The implementation of case investigation and contact tracing (CICT) for controlling COVID-19 (caused by SARS-Cov-2 virus) has proven challenging due to varying levels of public acceptance and initially constrained resources, especially enough trained staff. Evaluating the impacts of CICT will aid efforts to improve such programs. Objectives: Estimate the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations averted by CICT and identify CICT processes that could improve overall effectiveness. Design: We used data on proportion of cases interviewed, contacts notified or monitored, and days from testing to contact notification from 14 jurisdictions to model the impact of CICT on cumulative cases counts and hospitalizations over a 60-day period. Using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)'s COVIDTracer tool, we estimated a range of impacts by assuming either contacts would quarantine only if monitored or would do so upon notification of potential exposure. We also varied the observed program metrics to assess their relative influence. Results: Performance by jurisdictions varied widely. Jurisdictions isolated between 12 and 86% of cases (including contacts which became cases) within 6 to 10 days after exposure-and-infection. We estimated that CICT-related reductions in transmission ranged from 0.4% to 32%. For every 100 cases prevented by nonpharmaceutical interventions, CICT averted between 4 and 97 additional cases. Reducing time to case isolation by one day increased averted case estimates by up to 15 percentage points. Increasing the proportion of cases interviewed or contacts notified by 20 percentage points each resulted in at most 3 or 6 percentage point improvements in averted cases. Conclusions: We estimated that case investigation and contact tracing reduced the number of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations among all jurisdictions studied. Reducing time to isolation produced the greatest improvements in impact of CICT.

scholarly journals A Systematic Review on the Intervention Using Exercise Gaming to reduce Childhood Obesity

2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aminuddin NA ◽  
Azit NA
Keyword(s):  
Systematic Review ◽  
Childhood Obesity ◽  
English Language ◽  
Developed Countries ◽  
The United States ◽  
Activity Level ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Global Public Health ◽  
The Impact

The worsening trend of childhood obesity is a global public health issue. Digital technology evolution is a contributing factor towards physical inactivity and obesity among children. In order to overcome this growing problem, exercise games have been introduced in early eighties to ameliorate this obesogenic environment. Exercise games utilize innovative technologies that provide an interactive environment, requiring gestures and body movements to simulate on-screen gameplay. The objective of this review is to assess the effectiveness of exercise gaming intervention in managing childhood obesity. A systematic review was performed. Six articles examining exercise video games impact on weight management among children published between January 2013 and December 2017 in the English language were selected from a total of 54 articles identified through five major search engines. Majority of the research was conducted in developed countries particularly in the United States whereby some developing countries had started with small-scale researches in this area. The result indicated that there was a significant increase in physical activity level, reduction of BMI, reduced adipose tissue composition and a positive psychological impact after the intervention of exercise games. However, the impact of exercise games on physiological and metabolic parameters were inconclusive and requires further study. In conclusion, exercise games are the effective way to combat childhood obesity, along with other modules of lifestyle.

The Impact of U.S. Energy Policy on International Health: Alternate Paths into the Future

1982 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Ratcliffe ◽  
Judith C. Merrill
Keyword(s):  
Renewable Energy ◽  
Environmental Impacts ◽  
Renewable Energy Sources ◽  
Health Sector ◽  
International Health ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Health Educators ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Health And Mortality

Historical, sociological, and epidemiological research shows that international health and mortality levels are determined primarily not by health sector policies but, instead, by national and international policies that shape the broader sociopolitical and economic systems within which health sectors are embedded. Such policies have traditionally been considered to lie outside the domain of the health sector and, therefore, not of concern to health educators. One such national policy with the potential to powerfully influence international health and mortality levels is the looming choice between alternate American energy paths: the capital-intensive, large-scale, and centralized “hard” path of non-renewable energy resources; and the labor-intensive, small-scale, and decentralized “soft” path of renewable energy sources. Substantial effort has been directed to projecting the physical environmental impacts in the United States for both paths. But the social environmental impacts of each path and their implications for international health have been ignored. This article reviews links between alternate U.S. energy paths and alternate international health futures, and their implications for health educators around the world.

scholarly journals Combating structural racialization in the agriculture industry : a case study of Hmong social capital and collective entrepreneurship in the Twin Cities, MN region

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Lindsay M Hill
Keyword(s):  
Social Capital ◽  
Collective Action ◽  
Cooperative Behavior ◽  
The United States ◽  
Small Scale ◽  
Twin Cities ◽  
Agriculture Industry ◽  
Collective Entrepreneurship ◽  
The Impact

Throughout the United States, the agriculture industry has witnessed a demographic shift in its farming population- becoming older, more white, and dominated by men. It, therefore, is imperative that we seek to understand the causes and implications of this trend, especially for populations that may be excluded from market entry in this industry. Drawing on the literatures of ethnic enclaves, social networks, social capital, collective action, and collective entrepreneurship, this research project conducts a case study of the impact of structural racialization in the U.S. agriculture industry on the entrepreneurial opportunities facing the Hmong community in the Twin Cities, Minnesota region. It finds socially disadvantaged farmers, like the Hmong growers of the Twin Cities, face significant structural challenges in engaging in agricultural production on a small-scale. Additionally, this research argues the presence of an entrepreneurial organization working in pursuit of collective action and cooperative behavior is essential to combating the industry's structural challenges and promoting the success of the individual entrepreneurs of color who operate within the mainstream economy.

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