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Impacts of Comprehensive Climate and Energy Policy Options on the U.S. Economy (open access)

Impacts of Comprehensive Climate and Energy Policy Options on the U.S. Economy

This study compiles and updates the findings of 16 comprehensive state climate action plans and extrapolates the results to the nation. The study then takes those results and using a widely accepted econometric model projects the national impact of these policies on employment, incomes, gross domestic product (GDP) and consumer energy prices. Finally, using the bottom-up data developed by the states and aggregated here, the study models the national impact of major features of the Kerry-Lieberman climate bill under consideration in Congress in 2010. These state action plans and supporting assessments were proposed by over 1,500 stakeholders and technical work group experts appointed by 16 governors and state legislatures to address climate, energy and economic needs through comprehensive, fact-based, consensus-driven, climate action planning processes conducted over the past five years with facilitative and technical assistance by the Center for Climate Strategies. Findings show potential national improvements from implementation of a top set of 23 major sector-based policies and measures drawn from state plans.
Date: July 2010
Creator: Center for Climate Strategies
Object Type: Text
System: The UNT Digital Library
Prison Notes: an Introductory Study of Inmate Marginalia (open access)

Prison Notes: an Introductory Study of Inmate Marginalia

This thesis introduces the study of inmate marginalia as a method for understanding inmates’ uses of texts in prison libraries and for understanding the motivations for these uses. Marginalia are the notes, drawings, underlining, and other markings left by readers in the texts with which they interact. I use the examples of the Talmudic projects to set a precedent for the integration of marginal discourses into the central discourse of society. Next, I discuss the arguments surrounding the use of texts in prison libraries, including an outline for an ideal study of inmate marginalia. Finally, I discuss the findings of my on-site research at four prison libraries in Washington State. After scanning evidence of marginalia from forty-eight texts, a relatively small sample, I divided the marginalia by gender of facility, genre of text, address of the marginalia, and type of marginalia and found statistically significant correlations (p < 0.05) between gender and genre, gender and address, gender and type, and genre and type. However, while these correlations are statistically weak and require further investigation, the statistically significant correlations indicate the potential for integrating inmate marginalia studies into the scholarly discussions regarding inmates’ interactions with texts in prison.
Date: December 2015
Creator: Hunter, Cody
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
Community Development at Heronswood Botanical Garden (open access)

Community Development at Heronswood Botanical Garden

The overall main goal of this research is to assist with the planning and creation of an ethnobotanical addition at the Heronswood Garden, a botanical garden located in northwest Washington state recently purchased by the Port Gamble S’Klallam Tribe. Methods included a three month long ethnographic study of Heronswood Garden as an official intern, and conducting a needs assessment that primarily employed participant observation and semi-structured open-ended interviews with all garden employees. Information revealed through the research includes causal issues behind a lack of community participation at the garden, elaboration on the solutions to various issues facilitated by negotiating and combining the views and opinions of the garden’s employees, and author reflections on the needs assessment report and the project as a whole. This research connects itself with and utilizes the methodologies and theories from applied anthropology, environmental anthropology, and environmental science to provide contemporary perspective into the subject of preserving or preventing the loss of biodiversity, language diversity, and sociocultural diversity.
Date: May 2015
Creator: Cherry, Levi Scott
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library
The Effects of Neighboring, Social Networks, and Collective Efficacy on Crime Victimization: an Alternative to the Systemic Model (open access)

The Effects of Neighboring, Social Networks, and Collective Efficacy on Crime Victimization: an Alternative to the Systemic Model

The systemic model posits that informal social control directly reduces crime victimization and social networks indirectly reduce crime victimization through informal social control. While empirical testing of the systemic model advanced the theory, important analytical issues remain. First, social networks are inconsistently conceptualized and measured. Second, the conceptual relationship between social networks and informal social control remains unclear. This study addresses these issues by testing an alternative to the systemic model, including new constructs and hypotheses. The goal is to develop better indicators for the model and refine the theory, rethinking and deepening the existing theory about neighborhood effects on crime victimization. The data come from the 2002-2003 Seattle Neighborhoods and Crime Survey (N=2,200). Structural equation modeling (SEM), a multivariate statistical technique, was used to analyze these data. The SEM included five latent constructs (neighboring, neighborhood and non-neighborhood social networks, collective efficacy, and crime victimization) and six social structural variables (racially homogeneous neighborhood, resident tenure, household income, family disruption, male, and non-white ethnicity). One of my 9 hypotheses was supported; the remaining hypotheses were partly supported. The results support my argument that the systemic model is too simplistic, but the relationships among the variables are not exactly as I hypothesized. …
Date: May 2015
Creator: Soto, Anthony Jaime
Object Type: Thesis or Dissertation
System: The UNT Digital Library