Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Assessing Compliance To Water Resources And Reconstruction Framework During Post-Conflict Reconstruction Borno State, Muritala Olaniyi Oke Dr

Journal of African Conflicts and Peace Studies

Northeast and northwest of Nigeria have, as a result of activities of Boko Haram, bandit and kidnappers, had their public and private properties destroyed. Governments and other stakeholders, upon some successes of the military, have started post-conflict reconstruction to rebuild the war-torn urban and rural communities with the provision of water taking the center stage. This paper looks at the utilisation of Water Resources and a Reconstruction framework for integrating water projects into reconstruction processes. This paper rests on the argument that water projects during reconstruction should not be handled as “normal” water projects and that a more culturally and …

Forewarned Is Forearmed: Review Of Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards And Risk Reduction In The Modern World By Timothy H. Dixon (2017), Jason Makansi

Numeracy

Timothy H. Dixon. 2017. Curbing Catastrophe: Natural Hazards and Risk Reduction in the Modern World. (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press) 300 pp. ISBN 978-1108113663.

Curbing Catastrophe for the most part lives up to what is claimed in the foreword: “…a compelling account of recent and historical disasters, both natural and human-caused, drawing on common themes and providing a holistic understanding of hazards, disasters, and mitigation for anyone interested in this important and topical subject.” This is a pretty thorough treatment of an extraordinarily complex subject, and the gaps identified in this review should be considered explications more than …

Models As Weapons: Review Of Weapons Of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality And Threatens Democracy By Cathy O’Neil (2016), Samuel L. Tunstall

Numeracy

Cathy O’Neil. 2016. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy (New York, NY: Crown) 272 pp. ISBN 978-0553418811.

Accessible to a wide readership, Cathy O’Neil’s Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy provides a lucid yet alarming account of the extensive reach of mathematical models in influencing all of our lives. With a particular eye towards social justice, O’Neil not only warns modelers to be cognizant of the effects of their work on real people—especially vulnerable groups who have less power to fight back—but also encourages laypersons to take initiative …

Quantitative Map Literacy: A Cross Between Map Literacy And Quantitative Literacy, Ming Xie, H. L. Vacher, Steven Reader, Elizabeth Walton

Numeracy

We define quantitative map literacy (QML), a cross between map literacy and quantitative literacy (QL), as the concepts and skills required to accurately read, use, interpret, and understand the quantitative information embedded in a geospatial representation of data on a geographic background. Long used as tools in technical geographic fields, maps are now a common vehicle for communicating quantitative information to the public. As such, QML has potential to stand alongside health numeracy and financial literacy as an identifiable subdomain of transdisciplinary QL.

What concepts and skills are crucial for QML? The obvious answer is, “It depends on the type …

Assessing Preservation Priorities Of Caves And Karst Areas Using The Frequency Of Endemic Cave-Dwelling Species, Eugen Nitzu, Marius Vlaicu, Andrei Giurginca, Ioana N. Meleg, Ionut Popa, Augustin Nae, Ştefan Baba

International Journal of Speleology

Endemic and rare species as bioindicators of habitat vulnerability were used to develop protection and management plans for biotope prioritization (mainly islands habitats, lava tubes or groundwaters). Due to their narrow distribution, the endemic species (species confined to a restricted geographic area) are more susceptible to ecological disequilibrium and habitat loss than the widespread ones. Consequently, endemics become endangered in the context of ecological disturbance caused by anthropogenic pressure, making them suitable candidates to assess environmental preservation needs. Taking into consideration that most of the stygobitic and troglobitic species are endemic and confined to specific karst areas, based on their …

Towards Food Service Sustainability In Suburban Environments By Optimally Locating Shared Anaerobic Digester Units, Rebecca Loraamm, Joni Downs, Robert Alonso Bair, Daniel Yeh

Suburban Sustainability

Anaerobic digestion is an effective method for reducing food waste at the consumer level. Drawbacks associated with this strategy include high construction costs for multiple digester units and limited public awareness of the method’s commercial potential. Given the large scale problem of food waste, an approach establishing community partnerships between local businesses and primary schools is offered to combat the problem of food waste. Optimizing the placement of shared digester units enabling utilization by multiple stakeholders is the suggested mitigation method. This research explores application of the p-median problem to determine the set of optimal sites for shared anaerobic digester …

Late Quaternary Speleogenesis And Landscape Evolution In A Tropical Carbonate Island: Pango La Kuumbi (Kuumbi Cave), Zanzibar, Nikos Kourampas, Ceri Shipton, William Mills, Ruth Tibesasa, Henrietta Horton, Mark Horton, Mary Prendergast, Alison Crowther, Katerina Douka, Patrick Faulkner, Llorenç Picornell, Nicole Boivin

International Journal of Speleology

Kuumbi Cave is one of a group of caves that underlie a flight of marine terraces in Pleistocene limestone in eastern Zanzibar (Indian Ocean). Drawing on the findings of geoarchaeological field survey and archaeological excavation, we discuss the formation and evolution of Kuumbi Cave and its wider littoral landscape. In the later part of the Quaternary (last ca. 250,000 years?), speleogenesis and terrace formation were driven by the interplay between glacioeustatic sea level change and crustal uplift at rates of ca. 0.10-0.20 mm/yr. Two units of backreef/reef limestone were deposited during ‘optimal’ (highest) highstands, tentatively correlated with MIS 7 and …

Review Of Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills In History And The Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Approach By Kathleen W. Craver, Victor J. Ricchezza, H L. Vacher

Numeracy

Kathleen W. Craver. Developing Quantitative Literacy Skills in History and Social Sciences: A Web-Based Common Core Standards Approach (Lantham MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc., 2014). 191 pp.
ISBN 978-1-4758-1050-9 (cloth); ISBN …-1051-6 (pbk); ISBN…-1052-3 (electronic).

This book could be a breakthrough for teachers in the trenches who are interested in or need to know about quantitative literacy (QL). It is a resource providing 85 topical pieces, averaging 1.5 pages, in which a featured Web site is presented, described, and accompanied by 2-4 critical-thinking questions purposefully drawing on data from the Web site. The featured Web sites range from …

High-Resolution Digital 3d Models Of Algar Do Penico Chamber: Limitations, Challenges, And Potential, Ivo Silvestre M.Sc., José I. Rodrigues Phd, Mauro Figueiredo Phd, Cristina Veiga-Pires Phd

International Journal of Speleology

The study of karst and its geomorphological structures is important for understanding the relationships between hydrology and climate over geological time. In that context, we conducted a terrestrial laser-scan survey to map geomorphological structures in the karst cave of Algar do Penico in southern Portugal. The point cloud data set obtained was used to generate 3D meshes with different levels of detail, allowing the limitations of mapping capabilities to be explored.

In addition to cave mapping, the study focuses on 3D-mesh analysis, including the development of two algorithms for determination of stalactite extremities and contour lines, and on the interactive …

Sustainability Planning, Environmental Justice And Climate Change: Applications Of The Long Island Markal Model, David S. Friedman, Yehuda Klein, Jose Pillich, Michael T. Sullivan

Suburban Sustainability

As pointed out by many authors, sustainability is often vague and amorphous (See, for example, Dovers, 1989; Faber, et al, 2005; Glavič, et al. 2007). There is a clear need to make analytical and data-driven analyses of established and or proposed plans. MARKAL (MARKet ALlocation model) is an analytical tool that can be used characterize the impacts of sustainability plans at multiple spatial scales: global, national, regional, and local. In this study we apply the Long Island MARKAL model to answer three interrelated issues: 1, the development and incremental improvement of local and regional sustainability plans; 2, the impact of …

No More Hidden Secrets: Human Rights Violations And Remote Sensing, Tommy O'Connell, Stephen Young

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

Aim: This study used both high resolution and medium resolution satellite imagery to test three semi-automated remote sensing methods, in an attempt to identify useful tools to support eye-witness testimony and reports on human rights violations. As huts are routinely burned down during attacks on a village, particularly in Sudan, the number of huts and villages burned can be used to corroborate on-the-ground reports.

Methods: Three remote sensing methods (Supervised Classification, Change Detection, and Feature Extraction) were performed on imagery from both before the attacks in February 2006 and after the attacks to examine any useful trends that could be …