This research proposal’s topic is about the safe storage of Nuclear Waste. Specifically, the proposals topic is a literature review asking if Yucca Mountain, Nevada would be a suitable place for the storage of nuclear waste. The proposal has two goals, to “(1) explain the criteria for a suitable repository of high-level radioactive waste; and (2) determine whether Yucca Mountain meets these criteria” (Bloom, 1). This research will also take into account the economic impact of having a single site for nuclear waste disposal, and if the transportation costs and risks associated with travel will outweigh the harm. This proposal outlines a descriptive study, a quasi-experimental process putting together past studies to determine if Yucca Mountain is environmentally suitable and safe to house large amounts of nuclear waste. The various studies that will be used in the research will be reports of acts examining the rock structure storage safety, container corrosion, and evaluations of Yucca Mountain using the Environmental Protection Agency standards. The gathering method is simply research, going through databases and even websites, such as the EPA’s website. The author of the proposal may have already had some research done in a scientific journal as well. The proposals plan of action first outlines the criteria for a safe site for nuclear waste disposal, and secondly will evaluate Yucca Mountain based on these criteria. No analysis, or description of analysis is given in this proposal, thought I assume being a quasi-experimental study most analysis will be done in the previous studies. All this researcher must do is combine these studies and draw conclusions based on these studies. I think this is a worthwhile research proposal, though the only thing, at least I think, is missing is analysis.

Bloom, Roger. “A Proposal to Research the Storage Facility
for Spent Nuclear Fuel at Yucca Mountain.” Penn State Engineering. Undergraduate Engineering Review. Feb, 1999. Web. March, 2017. <http://writing.engr.psu.edu/workbooks/proposal.samples.html>

The Research Proposal I found is a topic relevant to all residents of California. It is called “A Proposal to Review How Geophysical Precursors Can Help Predict Earthquakes,” proposed by Christopher Gray to the Undergraduate Engineering Review in February of 1995. The question Gray wants to answer is how certain key geological factors can be indicative of large-scale earthquakes. In order to establish the importance of this topic and question, Gray details devastating historical examples such as the San Francisco earthquake of 1906 and the Yokohama/Tokyo earthquake of 1923. Using the two worst earthquakes of the 20^th century as evidence, he explains the importance of earthquake prediction to save lives and infrastructure from natural disaster. Because successful prediction models could have been extremely beneficial to San Francisco and Japan in these instances, Gray mentions the successful Chinese example of earthquake prediction as justification for his research. He discusses the accuracy of Chinese prediction models in predicting earthquakes rated 5.0 or above, and how these models have saved innumerous lives. He also notes that sometimes earthquake predictions yield no results, and people can be evacuated for months despite no earthquake ever occurring. Despite this, predicting earthquakes is still extremely relevant and there are several cases where prior action has saved thousands of lives.

Gray proposes an earthquake prediction model consisting of the following geophysical precursors: ground uplift and tilt, increases in radon emissions, and changes in electrical resistivity of rocks. Gray’s objectives for this research are to describe these factors, show when they happen during the five stages of an earthquake, and explain how they are used for earthquake prediction.

In the planning section, Gray explains the various goals he is trying to achieve with this research, as well as outlines the sources needed to accomplish them. He relies mainly on expert knowledge found in published books, and notes that he will exclude prediction statistics because there is a lack of documented success in predicting earthquakes. He also goes into great detail about his target audiences: engineering students and residents of earthquake-prone areas. He acknowledges that the two groups have different interests in this research and he plans to include relevant information for both.

At the end of his proposal, Gray lays out a two-month timeframe of collecting, organizing, and composing his research. Gray wrote very clearly and gave a thorough explanation of how/what he wanted to research.

Undergraduate Engineering Review. “Sample Proposals.” “Writing Guidelines for Engineering and Science “. Last modified February 1999. http://writing.engr.psu.edu/workbooks/proposal.samples.html.

(This research proposal was posted in order to educate potential proposal writers on the Undergraduate Engineering Reviews‘ standards. I could not locate a citation for Gray’s proposal but the attached link includes the proposal and his reference list).

Warren D. Devine, Constance A. Harrington

In the Willamette Valley area of the Cascade mountain range in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States there have been high levels of encroachment of Douglas-fir (Pseudotsuga menziesii) on Oregon white oak (Quercus garryana). These savanna and woodland areas were historically kept-up by frequent burns, usually caused by humans for many reasons. Oaks typically need direct sunlight to photosynthesize, so encroachment of Douglas-firs that have been overtopping oaks has caused oaks to live in suppression for decades, which hinders biodiversity, lifespan of the oaks, and the amount of acorns they produce. This study looks at how oaks respond over ten years to the invasion of Douglas-firs being removed. There were four different methods of release measured: Full release, or full removal of douglas firs in a plot, half release, thin only, and control in which there was no removal. Growth of oaks in plots where full removal of Douglas-firs was done was significantly greater than in plots where other treatments were done. Acorn production was also handily influenced by full removal of Douglas-firs, however, height and crown area growth was not influenced. Acorn production in thinned and half released plots also improved, but not as high as full release areas. Treatments indicated that removal of encroaching fir trees highly influenced oaks to grow rapidly and oaks showed no negative effects due to a dramatic change in environment.

Data needed for this study was behavioral because the forest ecologists were determining how oaks responded in growth to a change in surroundings. This is simply observing the tree’s behavior, but can be confusing because you are not testing human subjects. Data was collected by measuring plots that had 18 oak trees each with a wide range of DBH (diameter at breast height) with varying degrees of suppression. Data was analysed by a generalized, randomized, complete-block design analysis of variance (ANOVA) model. The experimental unit was the center oak of the plot.

Devine, W. D., & Harrington, C. A. (2013). Restoration release of overtopped Oregon white oak increases 10-year growth and acorn production. Forest Ecology & Management, 29187-95. doi:10.1016/j.foreco.2012.10.053

Maria Ruane author of “ Economic Development Prospects for a Small Island Economy: The Case of Guam.” This journal article talks about the developing economy of my little island, Guam. It is an article on the environmental factors of Guam’s economy, and the analysis in the relationship that they have to it. The factors are: Guam as a small island economy, the economy being relatively open and lacking economic diversification, Guam having lots of natural resources, and a multicultural society. The case discusses employment stats, gross domestic products, Guam’s lack of economies of scale and its limited productive resources. It discusses imports for Guam, that around 36% of its GIP, making Guam vulnerable to external shocks that effect tourist markets. It discusses that military and tourism as the most significant income for Guam. Then the case goes over geographic isolations challenges, absence of mass production, and the governmental involvement: which has shifted Guam towards privately owned businesses. Which in my experience has proven to connect to family/ governmental corruption on Guam. Towards the end the article discuses that the current dependency on military and tourism as their main income should be redirected towards increasing standard of living, smart management of the environment to ensure sustainability, resurgence of pride in their indigenous culture, high productivity and value-added, intensive use of human capital and technology, use of “green” technology and practices, non-carbon printing and finally, intensive use of indigenous resources including human talents and local materials. “This paper presented an in-depth evaluation of the environmental factors that affect Guam’s economy and its future development prospects.” There were many economic data sets, demographic data sets, some self-identifying data sets (connected to the ethnicity of the Guam population) in relation to this article. There were a few cultural knowledge aspects and a few hidden social patterns revealed. The data-gathering method that Maria used centered on surveys and questioners, public and private records, and content analysis. The method of data analysis is to see the cause and effect of each environmental factor on the economy of Guam. I enjoyed reading this piece; it gave me a more broadened overview of Guam’s economic system than I am used to. I can see how things operate as a resident, but seeing more factors involved into the economics of Guam lets me look at the factors that I didn’t see originally correlating with it. Guam has a fun economy, designed to attract tourist. However, that economy may be fun on the outside, but has been politically corrupt for a long time. Guam’s economy like many island economies have major struggles in self-efficiency, and although to a tourist might look strong, has too much reliance on too few of factors.

Ruane, Maria Claret M. “ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT PROSPECTS FOR A SMALL ISLAND ECONOMY: THE CASE OF GUAM.” Journal of Economics and Economic Education Research 13, no. 1 (2012): 15-23, http://0-search.proquest.com.books.redlands.edu/docview/1037693072?accountid=14729 (accessed February 20, 2017).

Jad Assi

“The Use and Misuse of Pleasure in Sex Education Curricula” uses qualitative, thematic analysis of sex education curriculum in America over a decade to understand how pleasure discourse has and hasn’t been incorporated into sexuality curriculum. Pleasurable sex is often linked in sex education curriculum to negative outcomes such as unwanted pregnancy or STD’s, proposing that pleasurable sex and safe sex are mutually exclusive.

Michelle Fine, sited in the article, wrote about the lack of female pleasure in sex education curriculum, arguing that while female victimization was broached it was not included with female pleasure in sexual situations. The debate over sex education pleasure inclusive curriculum has continued since Fine’s article in 1988. Many sex education program including those that have accepted funding for Abstinence Only Until Marriage (AOUM) programs provide fear-based sex education programs instead of presenting sexuality in a positive and healthy light, thus promoting sexual stereotypes. The lack of pleasure based curriculum is problem with both abstinence based and comprehensive sex ed programs.

Teaching fear based curriculum promotes trends of slut shaming or negative messages involving female sexuality.

“While President Barack Obama and congressional leaders have called for an end of funding for programmes that do not have evidence to support their effectiveness and have recommended increasing funding to states for teenage pregnancy prevention programmes (Guttmacher Institute 2009), in 2010 the US Congress elected to maintain $50 million of funding for states that wanted to continue to use AOUM curricula”( Lamb, Lustig, Graling, 2013.)

The three researchers studied three different types of curriculum across a decade including AOUM, comprehensive sex education (including sex education that is built to fit into a abstinence promoted curriculum), and liberal, private, sex education programs offered outside of school. “This sample included four AOUM curricula, six CSE curricula, and one nonschool-based CSE curriculum” (Lamb, Lustig, Graling, 2013.)

In regards to the teaching of the body in sex education curriculum, pleasure is often referred to in medical terms which has both benefits and costs. The benefits include a normalization of pleasure, taking away stereotypes that condemn masturbation or pleasure centers in the body, however the costs play out when the conversation of pleasure is not carried out into normal conversations between the educators and students, and thus may not fully inform students, promote dialogue, or even ostracize students who experience alternative forms of pleasure or who identify as asexual. Lamb, Lustig, and Graling note that most scientific oriented curriculum discussing the sexuality of the body leave out the anus as a potential pleasure center for males.

Pleasure was often equated to dangerous and opposed to safe sex. Whilst Lamb, Lustig, and Graling note that sex can be both pleasurable and safe, using the example of condom use, although wearing a condom may decrease some bodily pleasure, the knowledge that both partners are safe, may increase emotional pleasure. They also note that both parties may engage in sexual acts that do not require penetration to achieve pleasure.

Pleasure is also seen as opposed to self-control. This model of sex that involves pleasure as hormonally overwhelming presents that argument that sex is animalistic in nature. This argument is very problematic, promoting the ideology that inclusion of pleasure is mutually exclusive to choice. This presentation of sex is promotional of rape culture in essence. Pleasure is also posited to pressure and regret within relationships in sex education curriculum, unless within a monogamous relationship, which is seen as a safe place to practice sex pleasure between two individuals.

This research is very interesting in regards to my senior thesis on California’s new sex education standards implemented in the California Healthy Youth Act. Comprehensive sex education is now required in California, and has been updated to include many new issues that were not addressed in the previous curriculum, however pleasure not being one of them.

http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.books.redlands.edu/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=17&sid=7ad68c02-a035-4858-a840-6fa112010103%40sessionmgr4008&hid=4104

Lamb, S., Lustig, K., Graling, K., (2013). The Use and Misuse of Pleasure in Sex Education Curricula, 13(3), 305-318.

In this chapter of the book Teaching with Poverty in Mind, the author try and see if there are any factors that actually do correlate with academic performance in elementary school all the way up to high school. One theory that the author looks at is with genes and DNA. The author explains that about 30-50 percent of DNA is being taken up by behavioral genetics, while the other portion is is made up with environmental factors at work. These environmental factors could be anything in the world from where one lives and grows up to the type of relationships that a person could have with people. To go along with this point, the author uses the mnemonic device EACH to explain the risks that children face when dealing with poverty. Individually, they stand for emotional and social challenges, acute and chronic stressors, cognitive lags, and health and safety issues. All together, EACH represents a unique problem with academic success and it is important to understand so that students in poverty could have a better chance at success.

This chapter provided useful information that could help me formulate theories of my own when it comes to graduation rate based on socioeconomic status. Poverty affects many students nationwide, but the educational system is having a hard time cooperating with these students to give them a better chance at succeeding. One fact that I noticed from this chapter is that the author stated that although understanding the concepts of EACH could help many students, it won’t help all students. The author points out that not all children in poverty experience the same behavioral changes, so educators need to be creative in trying to understand these kids and the lives that they have to live with. Overall, I feel that this article made some good points and definitely gave me a more scientific point of view as the chapter looked at behavioral development, something that the other articles have lacked.

Jensen, Eric. “Teaching With Poverty In Mind”. Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, (2009): 13-46.

Snow Avalanche Climatology of the Western United States Mountain Ranges

Cary J. Mock and Karl W. Birkeland

The Western United States contains three climate zones that can produce avalanches; coastal, intermountain, and continental. Each zone has distinct avalanche characteristics. The coastal zone has abundant snowfall, higher snow densities, and higher temperatures and contains the pacific mountain ranges. The continental zone has by lower temperatures, lower snowfall, lower snow densities, higher snow temperature gradients, and a more persistently unstable snowpack resulting from depth hoar. The continental zone contains the Rockies. The intercontinental zone contains mountains in Utah, Montana, and Idaho and has characteristics of both the other zones. The zones generally follow an east to west gradient starting with continental in the Rocky Mountains and moving to the intermountain and then Pacific zone on the west coast. Defining these zones and describing the climate and environmental characteristics that are associated with each zone is imperative for improving forecasts of avalanche danger and preventing avalanches.

The two primary types of avalanches are loose snow slides or slab avalanches. Slab avalanches pose the greatest threat to life due to their greater size, greater distance they can travel and increased degree of unpredictability. Slab avalanches form when a cohesive slab overlays a less cohesive, weak layer. The slab breaks off from the layer beneath when stress is introduced. This stress can come from new or wind-blown snow, falling cornices, explosives, or the weight of a person on a slope.

The question this article was attempting to answer was could zones that can produce environments that avalanche be defined by characteristics unique to each zone. By answering this question it could enable better long-term predictions of avalanche risk and assist with short-term risk management and forecasting.

The researchers used interval/ratio climate data from public and private records of the Westwide Avalanche Network WWAN to calculate means of temperature, precipitation, snowfall, snow depth, and snow density for each of the three climate zones. Data from 45 stations and a few ski resorts from 1969 to 1995 created data sets that the researchers quantitatively analyzed for correlations. The unit of analysis was the same as the unit of observation because the locations the data was collected from was also what parameter for how the correlations were generated, from trends at those locations.

The researchers used a different method for data analysis as well. They used box plots to generate ranges for the snow avalanche climate classification, by comparing the variability of temperature, snowfall, snow water equivalent, snow depth, December temperature gradient, and rainfall for each of the three major avalanche climate regions. For example, this method of analysis visually displayed that coastal zones are characterized by warmer temperatures, ranging from approximately -3 to 0 degrees C on average.

This research provides more of the defining characteristics of the environments I will be investigating for my project. The method was interesting because it used patterns of temperature, precipitation, snowfall, snow depth, and snow density, snow water equivalent (SWE) and others to identify spatially where they are correlated to instead of looking at locations and finding patterns in those locations. It allowed for a greater scope and to not make conclusions about areas that you believe are important before the data has been analyzed.

Another valuable piece of information I learned from this article was that WWAN sites collect more information needed for avalanche hazard research such as snow water equivalent (SWE). However WWAN stations rarely observe backcountry avalanches, so Department of Transportation Data can be used as well.

One question this article prompted for my project was are climates shifting from continental to intermountain? There was little variability of zones demonstrating characteristics of other zones occurred during the data analysis but some areas in the southwestern (Colorado) portion of the continental zone expressed certain intermountain characteristics periodically. Could this variation be amplified by climate change and would that increase or decrease the risk of avalanches in that area?

Mock, C. J., & Birkeland, K. W. (2000). Snow Avalanche Climatology of the Western United States Mountain Ranges. Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, 81(10), 2367-2392. doi:10.1175/1520-0477(2000)081<2367:sacotw>2.3.co;2

In this article, “Social Change and Transitions to Adulthood in Historical Perspective” by John Modell, Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr., and Theodore Hershberg, the authors speak about the difference between peoples’ transitions into adulthood; comparing the males and females from 1880 to the males and females in 1970. They explain that there are multiple aspects of life that must be considered to see why and if there are changes from 1880 to 1970. The different stages that they closely speculate are the times when youths exit school, when they enter the workforce, become independent from their household origin, and when they get married. They compared the positive and negative relationships between all these phases within their respective years and then compare those years against each other. All this information is looked at in the article to see if there is a change in the patterns of adulthood transitions.

The topic of this article was growing up, the authors more specifically wanted to know if in fact youth has become “extended, normless, and lacking bounds” as has been suggested. To this they found that it is quite the opposite. To answer this question the authors required quantitative data which they used to compare the numbers of people in 1880 and 1970 in each of the transitional phases. They gathered these numbers with the use of pubic records. The method of data analysis would have been interval/ratio data, their data was numeric and their question required them to compare the difference in the numbers of people in each transitional phase and how that affected the numbers in each upcoming phase.

At first I thought this research was very complex and entangled but when the authors explained each step and how everything was  interconnected it made perfect sense and was extremely interesting. What I found to be most interesting was the increase in independence that transitioning youths have today compared to the youths in the nineteenth century.

Modell, John, Frank F. Furstenberg Jr, and Theodore Hershberg. “Social change and transitions to adulthood in historical perspective.” Journal of family history 1.1 (1976): 7-32.

By: Arch G. Woodside and Randolph J. Trappey

Woodside and Trappey hypothesized that the most accessible attitudes that are associate with a given store, with evaluative store attributes are highly predictive of primary store choice. The two looked at principal grocery shoppers of 301 households that responded to a survey assessing 7 possible determinant attributes reflecting J. A. Howard’s 3 key dimensions of retail store image. Those three dimensions are: convenience of the store location, the price of the store’s products, and the information the store provides about its products. Their findings suggested that the attitude accessibility of competing stores and brands in relation to the primacy of responses to evaluative attributes, is useful for accurately predicting primary choices.

Woodside and Trappey article used surveys and public and private records to give answers to stores and brands wondering why people shop at their place or for their brand. Their article discussed how if your store is easier to travel to be it walking, driving, public transportation, appeals to people more because of its close proximity to the targeted customers. Store’s that are cheaper tend to attract poorer families as well as some of the remaining families to be considered middle class. However, these stores are probably located in poorer areas. Stores located in more wealthy areas can raise the price for products. Finally, customers appreciate more descriptions about stores’ products so people actually know what they are getting and where it is coming from.

The types of data that could be used for their research would be survey, public and private records, and interviews but that would be stretching it. Woodside and Trappey used surveys and private and public records to collect their data and pose the research question of: Why do people shop at grocery stores? They mostly used qualitative data with little quantitative.