WATER IS LIFE
Water crisis ‘couldn’t be worse’ on Oregon-California border

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The water crisis along the California-Oregon border went from dire to catastrophic this week as federal regulators shut off irrigation water to farmers from a critical reservoir and said they would not send extra water to dying salmon downstream or to a half-dozen wildlife refuges that harbor millions of migrating birds each year.  

© Provided by The Canadian Press

In what is shaping up to be the worst water crisis in generations, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation said it will not release water this season into the main canal that feeds the bulk of the massive Klamath Reclamation Project, marking a first for the 114-year-old irrigation system. The agency announced last month that hundreds of irrigators would get dramatically less water than usual, but a worsening drought picture means water will be completely shut off instead.

The entire region is in extreme or exceptional drought, according to federal monitoring reports, and Oregon's Klamath County is experiencing its driest year in 127 years.

“This year’s drought conditions are bringing unprecedented hardship to the communities of the Klamath Basin,” said Reclamation Deputy Commissioner Camille Calimlim Touton, calling the decision one of “historic consequence.” “Reclamation is dedicated to working with our water users, tribes and partners to get through this difficult year and developing long-term solutions for the basin.”

The canal, a major component of the federally operated Klamath Reclamation Project, funnels Klamath River water from the Upper Klamath Lake just north of the Oregon-California border to more than 130,000 acres (52,600 hectares), where generations of ranchers and farmers have grown hay, alfalfa and potatoes and grazed cattle.

Only one irrigation district within the 200,000-acre (80,940-hectare) project will receive any water from the Klamath River system this growing season, and it will have a severely limited supply, the Klamath Water Users Association said in a statement. Some other farmers rely on water from a different river, and they will also have a limited supply.

“This just couldn’t be worse,” said Klamath Irrigation District president Ty Kliewer. “The impacts to our family farms and these rural communities will be off the scale.”

At the same time, the agency said it would not release any so-called “flushing flows” from the same dam on the Upper Klamath Lake to bolster water levels downstream in the lower Klamath River. The river is key to the survival of coho salmon, which are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. In better water years the pulses of water help keep the river cool and turbulent — conditions that help the fragile species. The fish are central to the diet and culture of the Yurok Tribe, California's largest federally recognized tribe.

The tribe said this week that low flows from drought and from previous mismanagement of the river by the federal agency was causing a die-off of juvenile salmon from a disease that flourishes when water levels are low. Yurok fish biologists who have been testing the baby salmon in the lower Klamath River are finding that 70% of the fish are already dead in the traps used to collect them and 97% are infected by the parasite known as C. shasta.

“Right now, the Klamath River is full of dead and dying fish on the Yurok Reservation,” said Frankie Myers, vice chairman of the Yurok Tribe. “This disease will kill most of the baby salmon in the Klamath, which will impact fish runs for many years to come. For salmon people, a juvenile fish kill is an absolute worst-case scenario.”

Irrigators, meanwhile, reacted with disbelief as the news of a water shut-off in the canals spread. A newsletter published by the Klamath Water Users Association, which represents many of the region's farmers, blared the headline, “Worst Day in the History of the Klamath Project.” Farmers reported already seeing dust storms that obscured vision for 100 yards (91 meters), and they worried about their wells running dry.

About 30 protesters showed up Thursday at the head gates of the main dam to protest the shut-off and ask the irrigation district to defy federal orders and divert the water. The Herald and News reported that they were with a group called People’s Rights, a far-right organization founded by anti-government activist Ammon Bundy.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown and California Gov. Gavin Newsom, both Democrats, have declared drought emergencies in the region, and the Bureau of Reclamation has set aside $15 million in immediate aid for irrigators. Another $10 million will be available for drought assistance from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Ben DuVal, president of the Klamath Water Users Association, urged his members to remain peaceful and not let the water crisis “be hijacked for other causes.”

The seasonal allocations are the region's most dramatic development since irrigation water was all but cut off to hundreds of farmers in 2001 amid another severe drought — the first time farmers' interests took a backseat to fish and tribes.

The crisis made the rural farming region hundreds of miles from any major city a national political flashpoint and became a touchstone for Republicans who used the crisis to take aim at the Endangered Species Act, with one GOP lawmaker calling the irrigation shutoff a “poster child” for why changes were needed. A “bucket brigade” protest attracted 15,000 people who scooped water from the Klamath River and passed it, hand over hand, to a parched irrigation canal.

The situation in the Klamath Basin was set in motion more than a century ago, when the U.S. government began draining a network of shallow lakes and marshlands, redirecting the natural flow of water and constructing hundreds of miles of canals and drainage channels to create farmland. Homesteads were offered by lottery to World War II veterans.

The project turned the region into an agricultural powerhouse — some of its potato farmers supply In ’N Out burger — but permanently altered an intricate water system that spans hundreds of miles and from southern Oregon to Northern California.

In 1988, two species of sucker fish were listed as endangered under federal law. Less than a decade later, coho salmon that spawn downstream from the reclamation project, in the lower Klamath River, were listed as threatened.

The water necessary to sustain the coho salmon downstream comes from Upper Klamath Lake — the main holding tank for the farmers’ irrigation system. At the same time, the sucker fish in the lake need at least 1 to 2 feet (30 to 60 centimeters) of water covering the gravel beds they use as spawning grounds.

The drought also means farmers this summer will not flush irrigation water into a network of six national wildlife refuges that are collectively called the Klamath National Wildlife Refuge Complex. The refuges, nicknamed the Everglades of the West, support up to 80% of the birds that migrate on the Pacific Flyway. The refuges also support the largest concentrations of wintering Bald Eagles in the lower 48 states.

GOP 2022 GOING FOR SCHOOL BOARDS

How school board meetings could attract more diverse audiences and boost public trust

BROWN UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] -- Schools in the U.S. are set to receive $123 billion in federal pandemic relief funding. Across the country, parents and school administrators are engaging in spirited debates about whether to teach critical race theory. And Americans are bitterly divided in their opinions about how and when to resume in-person instruction following rising rates of vaccination against COVID-19.

One might expect that given all that's at stake, school board meetings across the U.S. would be hotbeds of discussion. But in many cases, they're the same staid, sparsely attended affairs that they can often be.

"We have more than 13,000 school boards in the U.S., and each one of them meets monthly," said Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor of education at Brown University. "Everyone hates these things. People have told me they think going to school board meetings is like watching paint dry, like listening to nails on a chalkboard."

But after observing school board meetings in Southern California, Collins noticed not all of them were dull. Unlike many of its neighbors, the Burbank Unified School District's board didn't just solicit public comments -- it also responded to them, he said, eliciting two-way conversation.

Collins wondered: Could encouraging dialogue between citizens and their elected officials boost meeting attendance? The answer, according to his latest study, might be yes.

The study, published on Monday, May 24 in the American Political Science Review, found that giving the public more opportunities to engage in conversation with their school boards could significantly boost trust in local leaders and interest in attending public meetings -- especially among people of color and individuals from low-income households.

Collins' findings, when combined with conclusions from previous studies, imply that giving the public more opportunities to converse with elected leaders could increase civic engagement and lead to greater public trust in leaders -- which, in turn, could help school boards and city councils better represent their constituents.

"One thing I have found in my previous research is a correlation between student performance and democratic norms," Collins said. "If students are doing well, the district has stronger democratic norms -- meaning, there's respectful dialogue at meetings, there are fair and competitive school board elections, and the board operates with a certain level of transparency. So I wondered, how could school board meetings factor into that? What could draw more people to them, and what could make them more engaging?"

To find out, Collins engineered an online survey that required participants to watch one of three videos from school board meetings in different cities. A third of participants were served a video that showed a school board official opening the meeting floor to public comment, only to be met by silence. Another third watched a video that showed a school board yielding the floor to a community member, then rapidly moving on to other agenda items. And the final third watched a video where a member of the public had a chance to share concerns and receive a reply from board members.

Before and after watching the video, participants answered questions about their participation, and likely future participation, in school board meetings, perception of their own schools and school board, and opinions on the most pressing issues facing schools today.

Collins found that trust in school board members significantly increased among those who watched the video featuring deliberation between a concerned citizen and the board members. Among those who said they had little to no trust in school board members before watching the deliberation video, 27% changed their stance afterward, expressing high trust. By contrast, only 12% of those who initially expressed low trust reversed course after watching the first video featuring no public comment.

Many respondents also expressed increased interest in attending school board meetings after watching the videos. While 40% of respondents who watched the no-comment video expressed willingness to attend a public meeting in the future, that percentage climbed to 48% among those who watched the deliberation video.

Collins noticed the change in opinion was even more dramatic among people who had never attended a school board meeting before -- a group, Collins said, that is disproportionately made up of people of color and people from low-income households. Among those who were new to public meetings and watched the no-comment video, just 31% said they would be willing to attend another meeting -- but among those who watched the deliberation video, 42% said they would attend another meeting.

"I think a lot of people who have been socially marginalized tend to think, 'If I go to a meeting, will they actually hear what I have to say? Will they acknowledge my concerns? Will there be an opportunity for a dialogue?'" Collins said. "My findings clearly show that having discursive meetings could erase some of those concerns. When you're in a space where people are receptive to your voice, you feel like you belong there."

Generally, Collins said, those who attend school board meetings are overwhelmingly white, wealthy and educated -- and that's largely because they have more time and flexibility, they're more likely to have a social network that keeps them informed about upcoming meetings and pressing issues, and they're more likely to understand the bureaucratic language used by elected officials. While providing an opportunity for citizens to receive official responses to their concerns doesn't erase these realities of inequity, Collins believes it could still go a long way toward making other groups of people feel welcome and valued at meetings.

Thanks to a grant from the Spencer Foundation, Collins has begun to test that theory by conducting a series of in-person pilot tests in Providence. He expects to have initial findings by the end of June 2021. Until then, he hopes his virtual analysis inspires school districts to restructure board meetings with inclusivity in mind. Otherwise, they may not spend their federal money wisely, nor may they make the right decisions about reopening classrooms or establishing a critical race curriculum, he said.

"Education is synonymous with hope -- it offers this opportunity for something better," Collins said. "Even the biggest cynic on the school board probably has a fundamental desire to improve kids' experiences and give them a brighter future. I think the best way to do that is to understand all students' needs and to know where every parent is coming from. We want these meetings not to be illusions of democracy, but real examples of democracy at work."

Columbia Engineering team builds first hacker-resistant cloud software system

As the first system to guarantee the security of virtual machines in the cloud, SeKVM could transform how cloud services are designed, developed, deployed, and trusted

COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCE

Research News

 

IMAGE: MICROVERIFICATION OF CLOUD HYPERVISORS view more 

CREDIT: JASON NIEH AND RONGHUI GU/COLUMBIA ENGINEERING

New York, NY--May 24, 2021--Whenever you buy something on Amazon, your customer data is automatically updated and stored on thousands of virtual machines in the cloud. For businesses like Amazon, ensuring the safety and security of the data of its millions of customers is essential. This is true for large and small organizations alike. But up to now, there has been no way to guarantee that a software system is secure from bugs, hackers, and vulnerabilities.

Columbia Engineering researchers may have solved this security issue. They have developed SeKVM, the first system that guarantees--through a mathematical proof--the security of virtual machines in the cloud. In a new paper to be presented on May 26, 2021, at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, the researchers hope to lay the foundation for future innovations in system software verification, leading to a new generation of cyber-resilient system software.

SeKVM is the first formally verified system for cloud computing. Formal verification is a critical step as it is the process of proving that software is mathematically correct, that the program's code works as it should, and there are no hidden security bugs to worry about.

"This is the first time that a real-world multiprocessor software system has been shown to be mathematically correct and secure," said Jason Nieh, professor of computer science and co-director of the Software Systems Laboratory. "This means that users' data are correctly managed by software running in the cloud and are safe from security bugs and hackers."

The construction of correct and secure system software has been one of the grand challenges of computing. |Nieh has worked on different aspects of software systems since joining Columbia Engineering in 1999. When Ronghui Gu, the Tang Family Assistant Professor of Computer Science and an expert in formal verification, joined the computer science department in 2018, he and Nieh decided to collaborate on exploring formal verification of software systems.

Their research has garnered major interest: both researchers won an Amazon Research Award, multiple grants from the National Science Foundation, as well as a multi-million dollar Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract to further development of the SeKVM project. In addition, Nieh was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for this work.

Over the past dozen years, there has been a good deal of attention paid to formal verification, including work on verifying multiprocessor operating systems. "But all of that research has been conducted on small toy-like systems that nobody uses in real life," said Gu. "Verifying a multiprocessor commodity system, a system in wide use like Linux, has been thought to be more or less impossible."

The exponential growth of cloud computing has enabled companies and users to move their data and computation off-site into virtual machines running on hosts in the cloud. Cloud computing providers, like Amazon, deploy hypervisors to support these virtual machines.

A hypervisor is the key piece of software that makes cloud computing possible. The security of the virtual machine's data hinges on the correctness and trustworthiness of the hypervisor. Despite their importance, hypervisors are complicated -- they can include an entire Linux operating system. Just a single weak link in the code -- one that is virtually impossible to detect via traditional testing -- can make a system vulnerable to hackers. Even if a hypervisor is written 99% correctly, a hacker can still sneak into that particular 1% set-up and take control of the system.

Nieh and Gu's work is the first to verify a commodity system, specifically the widely-used KVM hypervisor, which is used to run virtual machines by cloud providers such as Amazon. They proved that SeKVM, which is KVM with some small changes, is secure and guarantees that virtual computers are isolated from one another.

"We've shown that our system can protect and secure private data and computing uploaded to the cloud with mathematical guarantees," said Xupeng Li, Gu's PhD student and co-lead author of the paper. "This has never been done before."

SeKVM was verified using MicroV, a new framework for verifying the security properties of large systems. It is based on the hypothesis that small changes to the system can make it significantly easier to verify, a new technique the researchers call microverification. This novel layering technique retrofits an existing system and extracts the components that enforce security into a small core that is verified and guarantees the security of the entire system.

The changes needed to retrofit a large system are quite modest--the researchers demonstrated that if the small core of the larger system is intact, then the system is secure and no private data will be leaked. This is how they were able to verify a large system such as KVM, which was previously thought to be impossible.

"Think of a house--a crack in the drywall doesn't mean that the integrity of the house is at risk," Nieh explained. "It's still structurally sound and the key structural system is good."

Shih-Wei Li, Nieh's PhD student and co-lead author of the study, added, "SeKVM will serve as a safeguard in various domains, from banking systems and Internet of Things devices to autonomous vehicles and cryptocurrencies."

As the first verified commodity hypervisor, SeKVM could change how cloud services should be designed, developed, deployed, and trusted. In a world where cybersecurity is a growing concern, this resiliency is highly in demand. Major cloud companies are already exploring how they can leverage SeKVM to meet this demand.

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About the Study

The study is titled "A Secure and Formally Verified Linux KVM Hypervisor."

Authors are: Shih-Wei Li, Xupeng Li, Ronghui Gu, Jason Nieh, John Zhuang Hui Department of Computer Science, Columbia Engineering

The study was supported in part by National Science Foundation grants CCF-1918400, CNS-1717801, and CNS-1563555.

Publication Details

The study will be presented at the 42nd IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy on May 26, 2021.

LINKS:

Paper: http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~nieh/pubs/ieeesp2021_kvm.pdf

DOI: 10.1109/SP40001.2021.00049

http://engineering.columbia.edu/

https://www.ieee-security.org/TC/SP2021/

https://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Main_Page

http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~nieh/

http://systems.cs.columbia.edu/

https://www.cs.columbia.edu/~rgu/

https://www.gf.org/announcement-2021/

https://www.amazon.science/research-awards/program-updates/2020-amazon-research-awards-recipients-announced

https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=ma7i8i8AAAAJ&hl=en

https://shihweili.com/

https://www.cs.columbia.edu

Columbia Engineering

Columbia Engineering, based in New York City, is one of the top engineering schools in the U.S. and one of the oldest in the nation. Also known as The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science, the School expands knowledge and advances technology through the pioneering research of its more than 220 faculty, while educating undergraduate and graduate students in a collaborative environment to become leaders informed by a firm foundation in engineering. The School's faculty are at the center of the University's cross-disciplinary research, contributing to the Data Science Institute, Earth Institute, Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Precision Medicine Initiative, and the Columbia Nano Initiative. Guided by its strategic vision, "Columbia Engineering for Humanity," the School aims to translate ideas into innovations that foster a sustainable, healthy, secure, connected, and creative humanity.

Disclaimer: AAAS and E

ROFLMAO 😜

Young teens should only use recreational internet and video games one hour daily

New research finds test scores, educational aspirations drop if children overuse non-educational technology

RUTGERS UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

Middle-school aged children who use the internet, social media or video games recreationally for more than an hour each day during the school week have significantly lower grades and test scores, according to a study from the Center for Gambling Studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick.

The findings appear in the journal Computers in Human Behavior.

Researchers say the findings give parents and children a moderate threshold for using entertainment-related technology -- no more than one hour daily on school days and four hours a day on weekends.

"Interactive technology is widely used to promote children's educational access and achievement," said lead author Vivien (Wen Li) Anthony, an assistant professor at the School of Social Work and research associate at the Rutgers Center for Gambling Studies. "During the COVID-19 pandemic, technology has been essential to facilitating remote learning. At the same time, there is a growing concern that excessive technology use, particularly for entertainment, may adversely affect children's educational development by facilitating undesirable study habits and detracting from time spent on learning activities."

The researchers, which include Professor Lia Nower of the Rutgers Center for Gambling Studies and a researcher from Renmin University of China, analyzed the China Education Panel Survey data, a national survey of educational needs and outcomes of children in China. Approximately 10,000 first-year middle school students were surveyed and followed. Their average age was 13.5 years.

The results showed that children who used the internet, social media or video games for entertainment four or more hours daily were four times more likely to skip school than those who did not. Boys used interactive technology for entertainment significantly more than girls. Boys also performed worse and showed lower school engagement levels than girls.

"Such findings are critical, particularly in light of the recent movement toward online learning in countries throughout the world," said Anthony. "In a learning environment that integrates the internet, it is easy for children to move across educational and entertainment platforms during learning without alerting teachers or adults to alternate activities."

Anthony said children in the study who used technology in moderation (i.e., less than one hour per day on weekends) experienced less boredom at school, potentially due to the positive effects of participation in social media, video games and video streaming such as peer bonding and relationship building. Using interactive technology for entertainment in moderation advanced children's cognitive development.

The findings suggest that parents place time limits on their children's interactive technology use, and that parents and teachers should help children to develop effective time management and self-regulation skills to reduce their reliance on technology.

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Games, computing, and the mind: How search algorithms reflect game playing

Scientists explore the links between game-solving search tree algorithms and the subjective experience of playing various turn-based games

JAPAN ADVANCED INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Research News

 

IMAGE: ILLUSTRATION OF PPN AND CNS AS SEARCH INDICATORS, APPLIED TO SEVERAL TWO-PERSON AND SINGLE-PLAYER GAMES. THESE INDICATORS CAN BRIDGE SEARCH ALGORITHMS AND ENTERTAINMENT VIA THE ANALOGY OF 'MOTION IN MIND'... view more 

CREDIT: HIROYUKI IIDA FROM JAIST.

Iahikawa, Japan - Humans benefit from playing games more than some might realize. Games can be a relaxed approach to learning or honing our problem-solving skills while relieving stress. However, game playing generally carries a considerable amount of decision-making, involving mathematical and statistical considerations that we make to decide on what we think is the best move. Thus, games showcase many of the impressive faculties and inner workings of the human brain, which in turns makes them a great testbed and playground for research on artificial intelligence (AI).

One aspect common to many games is decision making based on uncertain information about current and potential future game states. Experienced players can 'look ahead' from the current state of a game and analyze what could happen several turns or moves down the line, allowing them to strategize accordingly. Most notably, this mental process is akin to what some search algorithms are designed to do--not just for game solving, but also in general computing tasks across various areas of application. But how do we establish a formal connection between these fields?

At the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST), Professor Hiroyuki Iida's research group is developing new theories to analyze and ultimately understand the many facets of games and game playing, both from purely objective and psychological points of view. In their latest study published in IEEE Access Prof. Iida, alongside first author of the paper Anggina Primanita and Mohd Nor Akmal Khalid, also from JAIST, attempted to bridge computing notions with the experience of game playing. To do this, they proposed two indicators to be used in search tree algorithms--the probability-based proof number (PPN) and the single conspiracy number (SCN)--and applied them to various turn-based games.

These search indicators are values that search tree algorithms calculate to 'assess' their progress towards a desired objective. When playing a game, for example, an AI based on a search algorithm would use search indicators to analyze potential future states while looking mainly for plays that somehow maximize the chances of winning. Ultimately, search indicators and algorithms should be crafted carefully to minimize computing resources used; not every possible play has to be considered in detail, but only those that are likely to win.

The researchers applied these two indicators in search tree frameworks in the context of different games, including Chess, Chinese Chess, Connect 4, Othello, and 2048. The results revealed interesting information on what each indicator brings to the table. "The PPN-based search provided a means for determining the quality of information available in the game and seemed to operate in a similar fashion to human intuition. Contrarily, the SCN-based search provided a platform to understand the player's experience and how they manage risks when taking decisions," explains Prof. Iida.

Additionally, the SCN-based search approach was linked with another theoretical framework developed at Iida's lab: the concept of motion in mind. This approach analyzes various objective and subjective aspects of the game-playing experience in a mathematical fashion by drawing analogies with motion-related concepts from physics, such as those in classical mechanics. By comparing the SCN with these analogies of motion in games, the researchers found that the underlying computations are directly related to the oscillations (from losing to winning positions) that happen in both single-player and two-player competitive games.

Both search approaches analyzed in this study have applications in and outside the realm of games. For example, PPN can be used to save valuable resources and time during intensive computing tasks, such as optimization problems, planning, scheduling, and simulations. Meanwhile, the SCN is useful in contexts where high-stakes decisions must be made or when long-term planning is necessary, as it allows for optimizing values and minimizing risks. "Both PPN and SCN can be crucial components for research in the field of artificial intelligence, including evolutionary computations and high-performance computing," remarks Prof. Iida, "Moreover, they both provide stepping stones for measuring entertainment from an information science point of view."

Further multidisciplinary studies shall help us find more links between entertainment, information science, and the human mind. Hopefully, in the long run, we will be able to tailor games from a more subjective and even purpose-driven perspective, maximizing our enjoyment while being useful in many other ways.

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Reference

Title of original paper: "Computing Games: Bridging The Gap Between Search and Entertainment"

Journal: IEEE Access

DOI: 10.1109/ACCESS.2021.3079356

About Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

Founded in 1990 in Ishikawa prefecture, the Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) was the first independent national graduate school in Japan. Now, after 30 years of steady progress, JAIST has become one of Japan's top-ranking universities. JAIST counts with multiple satellite campuses and strives to foster capable leaders with a state-of-the-art education system where diversity is key; about 40% of its alumni are international students. The university has a unique style of graduate education based on a carefully designed coursework-oriented curriculum to ensure that its students have a solid foundation on which to carry out cutting-edge research. JAIST also works closely both with local and overseas communities by promoting industry-academia collaborative research.

About Professor Hiroyuki Iida from Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, Japan

Dr. Hiroyuki Iida received his Ph.D. in 1994 on Heuristic Theories on Game-Tree Search from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology, Japan. Since 2005, he has been a Professor at JAIST, where he is also Trustee and Vice President of Educational and Student Affairs. He is the head of the Iida laboratory and has published over 300 hundred papers, presentations, and books. His current research interests include artificial intelligence, game informatics, game theory, mathematical modeling, search algorithms, game-refinement theory, game tree search, and entertainment science.

Funding information

This study was funded by a grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in the framework of the Grant-in-Aid for Challenging Exploratory Research (Grant Number: 19K22893).

HOUSING IS A RIGHT

Analyzing the impact of college gameday homes in the American south

How vacant gameday homes affect housing prices, neighborhoods in Southern college towns

PROPERTY IS THEFT 

GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

ATLANTA--Absentee property ownership in many small college football towns has a negative impact on permanent residents of those communities, according to a study by a Georgia State University geosciences researcher.

The research is the first known attempt to quantify and map local geographies of gameday home investments.

Each weekend in the fall tens of thousands of football fans flood into college towns to watch their favorite teams kick off against rival schools. Many of them stay in gameday homes, investment properties that sit vacant for much of the year. Taylor Shelton, assistant professor of geosciences and the study's author, examined data from more than a dozen college towns in the South where schools in the Southeastern Conference attract large fan followings. He compared cities like Athens, Ga., Gainesville, Fla., and Auburn, Ala., and developed a study of Starkville, Miss., home of theMississippi State Bulldogs.

"The city of Starkville only has 25,000 people, and Mississippi State students make up nearly another 20,000," saidShelton. "But the football stadium holds over 60,000 fans, so the population of the city doubles or triples on gameday weekends, meaning the entire nature of the town is transformed."

The study, published in Cities: The International Journal of Urban Policy and Planning, analyzed local property ownership records, construction permits and U.S Census data. Shelton found that between five and 10 percent of all housing units in Starkville are likely gameday homes, and much of the town's net growth in housing units over the last 15 years is made up of vacant properties that are suspected to be gameday homes. In some neighborhoods, more than 75 percent of housing units are used as gameday homes.

According to Shelton, these properties -- which have grown significantly in the Southeast in recent years -- are owned by wealthy alumni, fans and investors who rarely occupy the homes, resulting in a net-negative for permanent residents.

"Having so much of the activity in the housing market focused on these limited-use, largely vacant properties drive up housing prices for the people who actually live and work in the area," said Shelton. "A lot of these smaller towns are now seeing rapid growth, but it really cuts into the kind of vibrancy and energy that you expect from a college town."

Changes to zoning and tax laws could ease some of the impacts, according to the study, but Shelton said implementation of these changes has been slow because gameday homes confer financial benefits for state and local governments.

"Bigger cities have implemented vacancy taxes on properties to discourage people from buying homes for speculative or temporary uses," Shelton said. "Being able to access some of that money and then reinvest it directly into affordable housing is a really simple step. But smaller cities are hesitant to do too much because they like the property tax revenue and they don't have the simultaneous burden of providing municipal services to year-round residents."

Cities like Starkville are often hamstrung by state laws that preempt localities from enacting stricter regulations on landlords or developers beyond what's prescribed at the state level, according to Shelton, which means things are likely to get worse over time.

One of the main goals of the study was to develop a reproducible method to identify gameday homes that can be applied in any city or college town across the U.S., helping researchers and policymakers make sense of what's driving this phenomenon.

"I hope this research can provide some legitimacy to efforts to create a more just and equitable housing in these smaller cities," said Shelton. "We should place the focus on what residents actually want and need to make their lives better, rather than having places that cater towards wealthy out-of-town alumni and fans."

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New research shows ridesharing services reduce sexual assault

INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND THE MANAGEMENT SCIENCES

Research News

 

Research Study Key Takeaways:

• Ridesharing can reduce a passenger's risk of being a target of sexual assault by providing a more reliable and timely transportation option for traveling to a safer place.

• The entry of Uber into a city contributes to a 6.3% reduction in rape incidents.

• A 1% increase in Uber pickups in a neighborhood translates to a more than 3% decrease in the likelihood of sexual assaults.

CATONSVILLE, MD, May 24, 2021 - Contrary to portraits painted in popular media, new research involving ridesharing services shows they provide an additional level of protection for potential sexual assault victims, particularly in neighborhoods with inadequate public transportation or in circumstances that are more prone to sex crimes.

The study, "The Deterrent Effect of Ride-sharing on Sexual Assault and Investigation of Situational Contingencies," published in the INFORMS journal Information Systems Research, found the entry of Uber into a city in the United States contributes to a 6.3% reduction in rape incidents.

"Even a 1% increase in Uber pickups in a neighborhood translates to a more than 3% decrease in the likelihood of sexual assaults," said Jiyong Park of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

The study was conducted by Park alongside Min-Seok Pang of Temple University, Junetae Kim of the National Cancer Center Korea and Byungtae Lee of the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

This research investigates the relationship between ridesharing and sexual assault, which has been a controversial, but underexplored topic in public debates on the sharing economy and ridesharing. This study is the first to present systematic empirical evidence that a ridesharing platform can provide a viable means to prevent sexual crimes under certain circumstances.

"Ridesharing can reduce a passenger's risk of being a target of sexual assault by providing a more reliable and timely transportation option for traveling to a safer place," said Park. "Moreover, ridesharing contributes to a more significant reduction in the likelihood of rape occurrences in neighborhoods with limited transportation accessibility, such as the city's outskirts and neighborhoods where a higher percentage of the population is non-Caucasian."

The study also found that ridesharing is more effective in deterring sexual crime in riskier circumstances, such as around alcohol-serving establishments on weekend nights or when the probability of crime occurrences increases.

"Despite the common misconception due to popular media stories, our work proves that digital platforms can be leveraged to solve societal challenges by matching supply and demand closely for relevant services, which calls for spatiotemporal investigations of granular-level data in designing platform businesses and devising policy instruments," concluded Park.

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About INFORMS and Information Systems Research

Information Systems Research is a premier peer-reviewed scholarly journal that covers the latest theory, research and intellectual developments for information systems in institutions, organizations, the economy and society to advance knowledge about the effective and efficient utilization of information technology. It is published by INFORMS, the leading international association for operations research and analytics professionals. More information is available at http://www.informs.org or @informs.

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THEY BECOME CAREGIVERS

Helping adults navigate the decision to move back in with parents

NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY

Research News

 

A recent study offers insight into how adults can navigate the often awkward experience of moving back in with their parents.

"People move back in with their parents for a lot of reasons, and the trend is increasing due to the COVID-19 pandemic and related economic woes," says Lynsey Romo, co-author of the study and an associate professor of communication at North Carolina State University.

"We launched this study before the pandemic happened because we wanted to learn more about how adults who move back in with their parents manage that process," Romo says. "How do they think about it? How do they talk about it?

"We think the findings are valuable because they provide some guidelines people can use to help ensure that 'moving back home' is a step forward instead of a step backward," Romo says.

For this study, researchers conducted in-depth interviews with 31 adults between the ages of 22 and 31. And the findings were straightforward.

"On one hand, study participants were certainly aware of the stigma associated with moving back in with one's parents as an adult," Romo says. "However, it was equally clear that framing the decision to move back in with one's parents as an investment in the future helped people think about the decision in a positive way and communicate about it in a positive way."

Specifically, the researchers found there were four things people did to make the move back home a positive experience for themselves and their parents.

1). Communicate clear expectations: It was important to have clearly defined expectations for both parents and adult children. For example, do the children pay rent? Are they expected to be home by a certain time each evening?

2). Contribute to the household: Things worked more smoothly when grown children made clear what they would do to benefit the larger household, such as attending to domestic chores.

3). Lay out intended timelines: It was good for all parties when the people moving back home had thought out how long they would be living with their parents, what their career and financial goals were, and how living with their parents would help them achieve those goals.

4). Embody adult behavior: Adults returning home should avoid slipping into habits formed when they were children, if they want to be treated as adults. In short, both parents and their grown children should give and expect respect in their relationships.

"Moving back home is a reality for a lot of people right now," Romo says. "Hopefully, this work will help them make the most of that circumstance and avoid any stigma associated with it."

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The study, "A Normative Approach to Understanding How 'Boomerang Kids' Communicatively Negotiate Moving Back Home," is published in the journal Emerging Adulthood. Corresponding author of the study is Jenna Abetz, an associate professor of communicaton at the College of Charleston.

 UK

Sustainable funding needed to provide nursery places

UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS

Research News

 PRINT  E-MAILExtra funding should be made available for early years care in the wake of the pandemic, researchers say.

Experts at the University of Leeds, University of Oxford and Oxford Brookes University have made the call after assessing the benefits of early childhood education and care (ECEC) for children under three during COVID-19.

They found children who attended childcare outside the home throughout the first UK lockdown made greater gains in language and thinking skills, particularly if they were from less advantaged backgrounds.

And now they are making several policy recommendations including

- A sustainable funding model for nursery provision

- Promotion of funded places in target areas where take-up is low

- Removal of administrative barriers to the take-up of places

Dr Catherine Davies, Associate Professor in Language Development in the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, who co-authored the study, said: "Our data clearly show that children from all backgrounds benefit from attending childcare for all or part of the week. Their cognitive skills become stronger, which will help them in their later learning and development, too. Government investment in sustainable, high-quality early years education and care is crucial so that all families can access this support."

Part of a nationally-funded project on Social Distancing and Development, the aim of the study was to analyse the impact of attending childcare - and of missing out - on children from different backgrounds, and to provide evidence for policymakers planning for further lockdowns and disruptions to early education and care.

The researchers worked with 189 UK families with children aged 8 to 36 months old during spring and winter 2020, when nurseries were closed to all children except those of critical workers or those classed as vulnerable. Between March and June 2020, nursery attendance dropped to less than 10% of usual levels. This was followed by an extended period of quarantine measures, reduced attendance, and disruption to sessions.

The families answered questions about their use of formal childcare such as nursery and childminders before, during and between lockdowns, informal childcare from family members or friends, and about their income, level of education, occupation and neighbourhood. Parents completed surveys about the number of words that their child said or understood, and their child's early thinking skills, or executive functions - the control of attention, behaviour and emotion. They followed up six months later, reporting again on their child's language ability and thinking skills.

Parents were asked to record their child's understanding and use of words across categories such as animals, vehicles and food. They were also asked how often their child exhibited different behaviours, and then played games designed to elicit skills such as waiting, finding, and sorting.

The team then explored associations between time spent at ECEC, the families' socioeconomic background, and children's growth in language and thinking skills.

Their findings showed that a child who regularly attended ECEC one day per week during the pandemic could be expected to understand an average of 24 more new words over the Spring-Winter 2020 period compared with their peers, while a child regularly attending two days could be expected to understand 48 more new words than their peers over the same period, and so on. This effect was greater among children from less affluent backgrounds. Overall, the results suggest that those children who could not attend nursery were disadvantaged by the social distancing measures.

In addition, children from all backgrounds who continued to attend nursery displayed boosted growth in thinking skills.

Study co-author Dr Alexandra Hendry, a research fellow at the University of Oxford, said: "Lower-income families have been disproportionately impacted by infections, deaths, unemployment, and mental ill-health during the pandemic - all stressors which are likely to negatively affect home interactions with children. We have demonstrated that early childhood education and care boosts these children's vocabulary skills, and all children's thinking skills.

"Solid abilities in these areas are likely to have cascading positive effects as children move through their preschool years and beyond. To maintain these benefits for child development and for levelling inequalities, properly-funded, high-quality early childhood education and care is crucial."

The project lead for the Social Distancing and Development Study, Dr Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez, Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Oxford Brookes University, noted "Our findings add to the evidence base that providing access to properly-funded, safe, and high-quality early childhood education and care may be a way to level some of the inequalities experienced by children from less privileged background, while still benefiting all children."

The paper, Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) during COVID-19 boosts growth in language and executive function, is published in Infant and Child Development.

The research was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council as part of its rapid response to COVID-19.

Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists' chief executive Kamini Gadhok MBE says: "This important research provides clear evidence that young children from disadvantaged backgrounds have been disproportionately affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, with a worrying impact on their language development.

"Given the importance of language skills for young people's life chances, it's imperative that governments across all four nations put support for children's communication and language development at the centre of education recovery plans. This must include action and funding in the early years which supports pre-school settings to work in partnership with speech and language therapists."

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Notes to editor:

* The Social Distancing and Development Study is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) as part of the UK Research and Innovation's rapid response to COVID-19 (ES/V004085/1). The Social Distancing and Development Study has been undertaken by Nayeli Gonzalez-Gomez at the Oxford Brookes University, in collaboration with Catherine Davies at the University of Leeds, Alexandra Hendry at University of Oxford, Theodora Gliga at the University of East Anglia, and Michelle McGillion at the University of Warwick. Dr Hendry is supported by the Scott Family Junior Research Fellowship in Autism, at University College Oxford.

The University of Leeds

The University of Leeds is one of the largest higher education institutions in the UK, with more than 38,000 students from more than 150 different countries, and a member of the Russell Group of research-intensive universities. The University plays a significant role in the Turing, Rosalind Franklin and Royce Institutes.

We are a top ten university for research and impact power in the UK, according to the 2014 Research Excellence Framework, and are in the top 100 of the QS World University Rankings 2021. Additionally, the University was awarded a Gold rating by the Government's Teaching Excellence Framework in 2017, recognising its 'consistently outstanding' teaching and learning provision. Twenty-six of our academics have been awarded National Teaching Fellowships - more than any other institution in England, Northern Ireland and Wales - reflecting the excellence of our teaching. Over a third of our academics are involved in applied research or as consultants to industry, and over the last ten years, the University of Leeds has produced more than 100 'spin-out' companies. http://www.leeds.ac.uk

University of Oxford

The University of Oxford's Experimental Psychology Department's mission is to conduct world-leading experimental research to understand the psychological and neural mechanisms relevant to human behaviour. Wherever appropriate, we translate our findings into evidence-based public benefits in mental health and well-being, education, industry, and policy. Key areas of research include Behavioural Neuroscience, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, and Psychological and Brain Health.

Oxford University has been placed number 1 in the Times Higher Education World University Rankings for the fifth year running, and at the heart of this success is our ground-breaking research and innovation. Oxford is world-famous for research excellence and home to some of the most talented people from across the globe. Our work helps the lives of millions, solving real-world problems through a huge network of partnerships and collaborations. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of our research sparks imaginative and inventive insights and solutions.

For further information, please contact: Genevieve Juillet, Media Relations Manager (Research and Innovation), University of Oxford, gen.juillet@admin.ox.ac.uk, phone 01865 280534.

* Set in a historic student city, Oxford Brookes is one of the UK's leading universities and enjoys an international reputation for teaching excellence and innovation as well as strong links with business and industry. More information is available on the Oxford Brookes website at http://www.brookes.ac.uk

Further information: For media enquiries, contact University of Leeds press officer Lauren Ballinger via l.ballinger@leeds.ac.uk.