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Browsing by Subject "regulation"

Now showing 1 - 8 of 8
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    Do Educational Institutions Score High on Their Sustainability Efforts?: A Case Study (and Grade) on Chemical Waste Management and Minimization in Teaching and Research Laboratories at the University of Minnesota
    (2013-02-12) Hanna, David
    During a time when environmental issues flood the headlines of newspapers, magazine covers, and television broadcasts, it is hard not to come across sustainable efforts by “concerned” corporations and institutions trying to proactively tackle these environmental issues. With all the publicity associated with the color green stamped on a product or plastered across a campaign, it is easy for the less sustainable acts by these entities to slip through the cracks and go unnoticed. Waste management and minimization in university and college teaching and research laboratories is one of these areas. This Note studies chemical waste management and minimization in teaching and research laboratories at the University of Minnesota, one of the largest institutions by student enrollment in the country. By examining the issue of waste management and minimization at the University, this Note helps elucidate how universities and colleges have missed key areas of development and improvement of sustainability. Part II of this Note provides an overview on sustainability to help contextualize the role of chemical waste management and minimization. This Part discusses the federal and state legal infrastructure that governs waste management and minimization in university teaching and research laboratories in Minnesota and examines the regulations currently in place by the Department of Environmental Health and Safety (EHS). Finally, Part III evaluates this legal and regulatory framework and suggests proposals on how Minnesota lawmakers and regulatory agencies can model and incorporate the legal framework and infrastructure of other states into Minnesota’s current waste management regime. By implementing this legal and regulatory framework while considering current university waste disposal and regulation, Minnesota can reduce a considerable amount of university chemical waste—an amount that contributed to the University of Minnesota’s high ranking among Minnesota hazardous waste generators in 2009.
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    Dynamic Flexibility in Infancy: Moment-by-Moment Biobehavioral Organization and Synchrony Across System and Context
    (2022-06) Stallworthy, Isabella
    As humans, our sophisticated interpersonal capacities emerge from neural, biological, and behavioral systems that are intricately coordinated, both internally and with other people. However, research to date has allocated comparatively little focus to the dynamic processes of how social interactions emerge across levels of analysis, especially early in development. Second-person neuroscience (SPN) and dynamic systems approaches together offer an integrative framework for studying the development of social interactions in infancy, through quantifying flexible biobehavioral organization, interactivity within and between people, and dynamic sensitivity to context. This study builds on previous work by using a novel study design that capitalizes on the ubiquity of personal technology and leverages newly adapted methodologies for capturing the dynamic unfolding of real-time, moment-by-moment social processes. The current study quantified continuous heart rate and behavior (~360 observations per system, per person) from 44 mothers and their typically developing infants (M= 9 months) during face-to-face interaction, a perturbation (unexpected series of text messages), and recovery. Aim 1 results revealed a flexible, putative self-organizational structure for the unfolding of both infants’ behavior and their physiology, with relatively less rigid organization associated with more positive social engagement across the entire task. Results from Aim 2 found dynamic, positive linkages between infants’ parasympathetic nervous system activity and their social engagement at the subsequent second, but only while their caregiver was actively attending to them. Lastly, Aim 3 results revealed moment-by-moment parasympathetic synchrony between mothers and infants in the form of a co-regulatory feedback loop. Mothers’ parasympathetic activity positively predicted that of their infant at the subsequent second, a linkage that decreased during the task perturbation and did not fully recover upon reunion. Conversely, infant parasympathetic activity negatively predicted that of their mother at the subsequent second, a linkage that was not sensitive to social context. Together, these findings offer new ways of capturing flexibility in social interactions –through the unfolding of moment-by-moment, flexible midrange organization; cross-system linkages; and asymmetric dyadic synchrony –reflecting both stability and adjustment in the face of changing contexts. Findings from this study contribute to both basic science knowledge and potential targets for monitoring and intervention to better support adaptive social development across the lifespan.
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    Effects of Gibberellins on Nectar Production in Arabidopsis thaliana
    (2015-12) Wiesen, Lisa
    Gibberellins (GA) are well known for their roles in regulating stem elongation and seed germination, but less understood is the role of GA in regulating floral maturation. We recently identified GA 2-OXIDASE 6 (GA2OX6, At1g02400) as being highly expressed in the actively secreting nectaries of Arabidopsis thaliana, but at low levels in other tissues. GA2OX6 was previously demonstrated to inactivate bioactive GA. Multiple independent ga2ox6 mutants displayed decreased nectar production, which suggests that elevated levels of active GA negatively regulate nectar production. Similarly, spindly (spy) mutants, which also have an increased GA signaling response, displayed decreased nectar production, further supporting the hypothesis that GA negatively regulates nectar production. Wild-type flowers also displayed an intense auxin response in actively secreting nectaries, whereas ga2ox6 and spy mutants had strongly reduced DR5-dependent signal in nectaries. This suggests significant crosstalk occurs between GA and auxin signaling pathways in the regulation of nectar production.
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    Essays on the Market Impacts of Regulatory Regimes
    (2018-05) Shapiro, Matthew
    This dissertation contains three essays, which focus on markets featuring heavy government intervention. The first two study the effects of Uber’s entry into the taxi industry of New York City. The final essay, coauthored with Boyoung Seo, studies intervention in the growing market for electric vehicles in California. In the first chapter I quantify the magnitude and distribution of the welfare offered by Uber’s cab-to-customer matching technology. I combine publicly available transportation data with data scraped from Uber and traffic cameras in New York City to estimate a model of demand for transportation services and imbed it in a spatial equilibrium framework in which Uber and taxis compete. Uber’s matching advantage depends on the density of the market. In consumer welfare terms, the introduction of Uber added only $0.10 per ride in the densest parts of New York but over $1.00 in the least dense. These results imply Uber’s appeal in its densest market has depended on advantages independent from its matching technology, including its lower regulatory burden. In the second chapter I document the potential of digitization to reduce statistical discrimination. First, I find that the search behavior of hail taxis, even controlling for profitability, highlights statistical discrimination against certain consumers. Second, Uber has mitigated the negative externalities in the cab markets among these consumers. A reasonable hypothesis is that Uber’s matching technology permits contracts without the cost of undirected searching in previously avoided areas of the city. In the final chapter, my coauthor and I assess the efficacy of vehicle subsidy programs and investment in a charging station network on demand for electric vehicles. In contrast to previous literature, we consider heterogeneity in tastes for electric vehicles and price elasticities across demographics, as well as the heterogenous marginal benefits of charging stations, and demonstrate the importance of both dimensions in correctly identifying the impact of subsidies and charging stations on demand. We use zip code-level data on vehicle purchases in California to estimate a random coefficient discrete choice model of automobile demand capable of proposing more efficient incentive structures.
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    Increasing Participation in the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program (MAWQCP)
    (2023) Kaste, Grant A; Gross, Peter S; Greene, Grace
    Since 2012, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) has operated the Minnesota Agricultural Water Quality Certification Program (MAWQCP) for farmers in the state. This voluntary program certifies farmers who implement certain conservation practices that aim to improve soil and water quality. Participation in the program has slowed since its inception and remains lower than the MDA would like. This report explores methods to increase participation in the program, evaluates environmental impacts the program has delivered thus far, analyzes the costs and benefits of the program, and assesses stakeholder views of the program. Methods included utilizing available data, outreach to stakeholders, information gathering from various program meetings, and a literature review of relevant research. Our findings indicate a need for more robust data collection regarding the benefits of the program and non-participant insights, more collaboration with industry and similar programs in other states, and marketing of the program on a watershed-level basis and as one of a stack of programs available to farmers. These findings directly support our offered recommendations and other considerations to work towards the goal of improving water quality and growing conservation minded practices.
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    Multiple Sovereigns and Transient Resources: Contested Ecosystems and Expanding Tribal Jurisdiction in the Great Lakes Region
    (2018-10) Matson, Laura
    In the past sixty-odd years, Indigenous nations and tribal groups have increasingly expanded their authority and advanced their communities’ interests in the realm of environmental protection. Multiple Sovereigns and Transient Resources: Contested Ecosystems and Expanding Tribal Jurisdiction in the Great Lakes Region seeks to understand some of the ways in which tribes and inter-tribal groups in the Lake Superior region have extended their influence over, engagement with, and impacts on environmental management and resource regulation. In particular, this dissertation investigates how tribes have mobilized jurisdictional authority to demand a seat at the table in regulatory discussions that impact their reservations and the treaty-ceded territories in the region. In so doing, this dissertation builds an empirical record of some of the strategies and mechanisms that tribes have used to advance their environmental interests in practical terms. This empirical record forms the basis of a more sustained critical engagement with the concept of jurisdiction. Intervening in legal geography, political ecology, and Indigenous legal scholarship, this dissertation argues that contests over environmental jurisdiction are not just disputes about static administrative units within fixed governmental hierarchies, but also enroll the authority to interpret and define the law and its normative orders. Through interviews, participant observation, archival review, and doctrinal legal analysis, I demonstrate how jurisdiction is practiced and produced through the day to day acts of permitting, rule-making, enforcing regulatory standards, litigating conflicts, building infrastructures, degrading and restoring habitats, and negotiating between governmental entities. Tracing the jurisdictional expansions of the Indigenous “third sovereign” illuminates the particular ontologies that ground state and federal environmental regulatory practices, but also provides a set of alternatives for thinking about resource protection in an integrated, dynamic, and co-dependent ecosystem.
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    Residential Land Development Regulation in the Twin Cities Metropolitan Area.
    (1982) Shippee, B. Warner; Dyke, George; Helgeson, Stefan; Stadum, Beverly
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    Sand Extractive Industries and Human Rights
    (2024-05-01) Bano, Azra; Clower, David; Torres, Ivan
    Sand mining is associated with a wide range of human rights abuses, primarily through environmental degradation that undermines the rights to food, water, health, and life. Affected communities face issues relating to land tenure and governance, and often experience violations of their procedural rights to public participation, access to information, and access to justice. This report analyzes the major human rights impacts of sand extraction in the Upper Midwestern United States, Kenya, and India, incorporating the perspectives of various stakeholders and evaluating the relevant legal and regulatory structures and practices for each case. Employing a qualitative research approach informed by literature review, stakeholder and expert interviews, and media analysis, we describe the human rights situation in each location and identify major trends characterizing the issue across different human, political, and physical geographies. We conclude by offering recommendations for States, businesses, and civil society organizations to respect, protect, and fulfill the human rights threatened by sand extraction.