bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Research on structural type of two-way connection fittings based on valve hall
Authors: Yang Guohua , Zhang Wei , Bai Haibing , Fu Jianghao , Guo Yinfeng , Wang Wenhao , Li Zengchao
Published: November 2022

Based on the research on the structural type of valve hall two-way connection fittings, with the sustained and rapid economic growth, the power demand of various industries increases. While accelerating the construction of UHV backbone power grid, improving the transmission capacity and transmission quality of the existing power grid has become a top priority. In ± 800kV UHV DC transmission project, the rated current is up to 6250A, and the current carrying capacity of valve hall fittings in converter station increases accordingly, which puts forward higher requirements for heat resistance and reliability of fittings. Therefore, it is very necessary to study the operation reliability of valve hall fittings in converter station. In this paper, two structural types of two-way connection fittings are analyzed. The temperature field of two-way connection fittings is simulated by using the electric thermal coupling finite element analysis method. At the same time, the high current temperature rise test is carried out, and the temperature at the key position of two-way fittings is measured by thermocouple. The high current temperature rise test and simulation results show that when 6250A current is applied, there is uneven shunting between the two specimens. Under the condition of meeting the temperature rise limit, the flow through of aluminum strand connection mode is more uniform than that of aluminum row connection mode. The test results are consistent with the simulation results, which provides a reference for the subsequent design of valve hall fittings.
A novel design and control method for improved LCL filter three-level inverter to suppress common mode resonant current and leakage current
Authors: Chen Weilun , Zhang Guorong , He Haiyang , Wu Zhizhen
Published: November 2022

The method of connecting the common point of the LCL filter capacitor of the three-level grid-connected inverter to the midpoint of the DC side can effectively suppress the leakage current between the DC side photovoltaic panel and the power grid. However, the improved MLCL inverter is easy to generate common mode resonance, which results in excessively increasing the midline current and affecting the efficiency and stability of the system. Aiming at the common mode resonance problem of MLCL three-level inverter, this paper expounds the generation of common mode resonance current and large neutral current by establishing the mathematical model of the improved MLCL filter. After analyzing the restraining effect and limitation of traditional passive damping control scheme on common mode resonance, a novel filtering structure is proposed in this paper, which is combined with PI+ PR double closed-loop control scheme to solve the above problems. Simulation results verify the validity of the analysis on common mode resonance and neutral current, and the effectiveness of the scheme in suppressing common mode resonance current, midline current and leakage current is also confirmed.
Analysis and improvement of measures for lightning protection of 35kV transmission line in a mountainous area
Authors: Zou Yu , Weng Tianyue , Li Wensen , Huang Ketian , Hu Yuhan
Published: November 2022

Lightning is an important factor affecting the safe and reliable operation of power transmission and distribution lines. As most power transmission and distribution lines are built in mountainous areas with complex terrain and changeable weather, the lightning accidents in mountainous areas are much higher than those in plain areas. Firstly, the mechanism of lightning damage and common measures of lightning protection are analyzed. Then, taking Lufeng line in Yunnan province as the object, taking the topographic and geomorphic characteristics of the line, the activity intensity of lightning strike and the line structure into consideration, three measures are compared by increasing the number of insulator string pieces, reducing the grounding resistance of poles and towers, and erecting lightning conductor across the line. Finally, erecting lightning conductor across the line is adopted to rectify the line. The feasibility and practicability of the rectification scheme are proved by calculation.
An active power coordination control strategy for hybrid doubly-fed DC system based on actual project
Authors: Hu Xingyang , Chen Kun , Zhang Longen , Wang Ting , Ye Pangqi
Published: November 2022

A coordinated control strategy for parallel hybrid doubly-fed DC power transmission system based on the actual project is proposed, which makes full use of the unique advantage of continuous power transmission of LCC-HVDC and VSC-HVDC. This project includes Longquan conventional DC converter station, Yichang back-to-back flexible DC converter station in Hubei province of China and their near AC gird. The control requirements of frequency recovery, damping oscillation and reducing excision of generator sets after the fault are realized by means of VSC/LCC emergency power control, power modulation and frequency modulation. The proposed control strategy is simulated and analyzed in PSCAD/EMTDC, and the effectiveness of that is verified.
Permanent magnet synchronous motor vector control based on BP neural network
Authors: Lin Yuzhe , Hu Hongming , Chang Yuhan , Wei Haofeng
Published: November 2022

In this paper, the traditional permanent magnet synchronous motor vector control system has problems such as low control precision, low reliability, poor system operation status. To solve these problems, because of the neural network has self-learning and self-adaptive ability to BP algorithm can be applied to parts of speed control system. This paper proposes a PMSM which based on BP neural network algorithm and control systems. Then the system model is established in Simulink environment, and the superiority and feasibility of the strategy are verified by comparing with traditional PID controller.
A BP neural network-Ant Lion Optimizer and UKF method for SOC estimation of lithium-ion batteries
Authors: Lian Gaoqi , Ye Min , Wang Qiao , Wei Meng , Ma Yuchuan
Published: November 2022

Accurate state of charge (SOC) estimation is of great significance to promote the development of new energy vehicles. And a battery model’s accuracy is of great significance for the battery SOC estimation accuracy. To this end, a method based on back propagation neural network-Ant Lion Optimizer (BPNN-ALO) and unscented Kalman filter (UKF) is proposed. First, a 2-RC battery model is established and BPNN is used to fit the OCV-SOC corresponding relationship. Second, the BPNN and ALO are combined to complete the battery model’s parameter identification, and UKF is used to complete SOC estimation. Finally, verify the BPNN-ALO-UKF under two working conditions, and compare it with the other two methods. The test results show that the proposed method has higher SOC estimation accuracy, the minimum values of Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and Mean Absolute Error (MAE) are only 0.51% and 0.40%, respectively. And under different working conditions, it also has a better generalization and robustness.
A mission reliability modelling method for intuitively displaying time elements
Authors: Cheng Hongwei , Wang Yanlei , Huang Jine
Published: November 2022

In view of the problems that the commonly used reliability block diagram modelling methods can not directly reflect the operation time elements of units and that whether an unit can be repaired or not during mission period, this paper proposes a graphical reliability modelling method that can uniformly represent the two key elements of equipment unit reliability logic relationships and its operation times, so as to improve the comprehensiveness of the display elements of reliability model and the accuracy of the logical relationship of each unit. Finally, a comprehensive example shows the feasibility of this method.
Purification control system of balanced charge lubricating oil based on PLC
Authors: Xu Fangyang , Yang Bikai , Zhao Xinrui , Zhang Jieshuo , Jiang Pan
Published: November 2022

Marine diesel engine lubricating oil after long-term use, due to pollution and chemical activity, internal impurities increased, lubrication effect gradually deteriorated. The lubricating oil purification device based on balanced charge agglomeration (BCA) can realize the on-line purification of lubricating oil. In order to further improve the purification efficiency, a purification control system based on PLC is designed in this paper. The system consists of a complex electromechanical integration equipment composed of oil purification equipment, PLC control equipment and touch screen. The precise control of control parameters is realized by PLC, which ensures the strict logical relationship between various steps of oil purification, and realizes the visualization and convenience of operation process. On this basis, the safety of the device is also guaranteed. Purification device in the actual operation, smooth operation, stable performance, high reliability.
Research on the quality evaluation method of rail transit vehicles maintenance based on the life cycle
Authors: Ge Yifan , Wu Lei , Shen Yifan , Shi Jiawei
Published: November 2022

In order to adapt to the current life cycle management mode of rail transit, this paper proposes a quality evaluation model based on vehicle life cycle maintenance. This model has three parts, which are objective evaluation, subjective evaluation and operational impact. The statistical process control method (SPC) is used in the objective evaluation. The subjective evaluation uses fuzzy algorithms to calculate the factors and weights that affect the maintenance quality, and then weights the actual number of failures to obtain the line deductions. Operation impact evaluation takes the main line failure as the analysis object, and combines the time, location and impact of the failure to obtain the line’s operational quality score. Then calculate the score of these three parts, the final line maintenance quality score. This evaluation system can more truly reflect the maintenance quality, and it has been applied in some pilot lines.
Nearest neighbor convex hull for health indicator construction
Authors: Yan Tongtong , Deng Yanqing , Chen Yikai , Xia Tangbin , Wang Dong
Published: November 2022

Developing a suitable and monotonous health index (HI) that can be used to represent a whole degradation process is a key step for continuous machine health monitoring during its life cycle. It is expected that the potential HI is able to inform incipient fault moment and then track machine degradation trajectories effectively and monotonically. Previously, nearest neighbor convex hull classification (NNCHC) has been widely applied for fault classification. In this paper, a HI construction methodology for machine life cycle health monitoring based on NNCHC is proposed. Firstly, a normal convex hull is modeled based on normal vibration data to fully characterize machine health conditions. Afterward, two HIs are constructed based on ℓ
1 norm and ℓ
2 norm distances between the normal convex hull and test points. The superiority of the developed approach in this study lies in the flexible and efficient development of a HI for fault progress tracking. Moreover, the only usage of a normal dataset in the proposed methodology is closer to real application.
Penalization-induced shrinking without rotation in high dimensional GLM regression: a cavity analysis
Authors: Massa E , Jonker M A , Coolen A C C
Published: November 2022

In high dimensional regression, where the number of covariates is of the order of the number of observations, ridge penalization is often used as a remedy against overfitting. Unfortunately, for correlated covariates such regularisation typically induces in generalized linear models not only shrinking of the estimated parameter vector, but also an unwanted rotation relative to the true vector. We show analytically how this problem can be removed by using a generalization of ridge penalization, and we analyse the asymptotic properties of the corresponding estimators in the high dimensional regime, using the cavity method. Our results also provide a quantitative rationale for tuning the parameter controlling the amount of shrinking. We compare our theoretical predictions with simulated data and find excellent agreement.
The infection and recovery periods of the 2022 outbreak of monkey-pox virus disease
Authors: Al-Raeei Marwan
Published: November 2022

The Monkey-pox virus disease (MPXD) is a type of the pox disease similar to the smallpox disease. This disease produces rashes with lesions on the skin. The MPXD is an endemic in some countries of Africa, however, a recent outbreak of this disease started to appear in some countries, such as the United Kingdom, Spain, Greece, Portugal, Australia, Brazil, and the United States. Lots of indicators are employed for forecasting the 2022 outbreak of the MPXD such as the infection period, the recovery period, the force of infection, the incubation period of the disease…..etc. The aim of this study is finding the infection period, and the recovery period of the 2022 outbreak of the monkey-pox virus disease in two countries: the United States, and Spain. We apply the simulation and analytical methods on a simple epidemic model, which is the SIRD infectious disease model, for finding the previous periods. We found that the infection period of the recent outbreak of the MPXD varies from 10 days to 20 days, while we found that the recovery periods of the recent outbreak of the MPXD varies from 15 days to 30 days. Besides, we found that the average value of the infection period of the 2022 outbreak of the MPXD is about two weeks, and the average value of the recovery period of the 2022 outbreak of the MPXD is about three weeks. The analytical solution with the simulation algorithm which we used in this study can be expanded for other forecasting parameters of the MPXD, and also for multiple countries.
Stress and Coping in Sexual and Gender Minority Relationships
Authors: Samrock Steven , Kline Kai , Randall Ashley K.
Published: November 2022

LGBTQ+ is an inclusive term used to encompass sexual and gender minority individuals in aspects of their diversity related to sexual and gender expression. Specifically, LGBTQ+ refers to individuals who may identify as lesbian (L), gay (G), bisexual (B), transgender (T), queer (Q), or other sexual and/or gender identities (+). Given that many individuals live in heteronormative and cisnormative societies, the LGBTQ+ community experiences unique stressors specific to their traditionally marginalized identity/identities; such experiences are defined as experiences of minority stress. Aspects of minority stress, including stigma, prejudice, and discrimination, generate stressful social environments for LGBTQ+ individuals and these experiences are often negatively associated with individual and relationship well-being. For example, if an individual experiences harassment for their sexual and/or gender identity, they may experience feelings of distress and be more reserved with public displays of affection with their partner. As such, one romantic partner’s experience of minority stress can impact both they and their partner’s experiences.

Relationship maintenance behaviors, such as communicating and coping with the stress together with one’s partner (dyadic coping), have been identified that may help mitigate minority stress’ deleterious effects. Dyadic coping is a process that conceptualizes how partners cope with stress in the context of their relationship, identifying how partners communicate their stress and the respective coping behaviors. Finally, there has been an insurgence of relationship education programs designed to help LGBTQ+ couples identify and cope with experiences of minority stress. For example, the Couples Coping Enhancement Training–Sexual Minority Stress incorporates the unique experiences of sexual minority couples to help couples improve (minority) stress management; enhance their ability to cope as a couple; sensitize both partners to ideas of mutual fairness, equity, and respect; improve communication; and improve (emotional) problem-solving skills.
Perfectionism
Authors: Mang Franz , Chan Joseph
Published: November 2022

In contemporary Anglo-American political philosophy, perfectionism is widely understood as the idea that the state may, or should, promote valuable conceptions of the good life and discourage conceptions that are worthless or bad. As such, debates over perfectionism occupy a central place in contemporary political philosophy because political philosophers are deeply concerned about whether or not a liberal state is permitted to promote any particular ethical or religious doctrine or impose it on its citizens.

In general, contemporary perfectionists do not argue for the state’s pursuit of any religious doctrine. They only maintain that the state is permitted to make a wide range of public policies with the aim of promoting the good life. These policies, commonly found in liberal democratic societies, may include subsidizing museums and art galleries, preserving cultural heritage, setting up public libraries and providing free access to reading materials, encouraging athletic excellence, conserving nature and biodiversity, and educating citizens about the harm of recreational drugs. Nevertheless, perfectionism remains controversial among philosophers and political scientists.

It might be beneficial to take a sympathetic view of perfectionism and consider how perfectionists might defend their position against some of the common objections. These objections mainly include: (a) that the state does not possess legitimate authority to make decisions about the good life and seek to promote it; (b) that perfectionist policies are generally illiberal and paternalistic; and (c) that conceptions of the good life are objects of reasonable disagreement and hence cannot legitimately be promoted by the state. In addition, the nature and importance of perfectionist policies and politics will be discussed.
Quality of Working Life
Authors: Guest David E.
Published: November 2022

The quality of working life (QWL) is concerned with the conditions and practices in organizations that help to promote the well-being of the workforce. Interest in the subject grew during the second half of the 20th century, in the face of rising worker expectations and the challenges faced by organizations in attracting, motivating, and retaining staff in tight labor markets. Initial conceptual and empirical developments were provided by socio-technical systems theory and motivation theory. Much emphasis was placed on the design of jobs, often in autonomous work groups and in industrial democracy that provided workers with a role in the design of their work. However, a strength as well as a challenge for QWL advocacy is that it covers a wide range of topics relevant to worker well-being, such as fair pay, opportunities for development and growth, healthy working conditions, and work–life balance, as well as the core topic of work design to permit sufficient worker autonomy. In practice, the main focus of interventions addressed work design. For a few years, quality of working life became a “movement” that attracted the interest of industry and governments, providing opportunities for the wider application of the work of psychologists and other social scientists; however, changes in the economic circumstances and in labor markets led to a decline of interest. Nevertheless, relevant research on specific features of QWL continued to provide a strong evidence base. Entering the third decade of the 21st century, a rekindled interest in the topic has emerged among academics and policymakers, due to the advent of digitization, the growth of more precarious forms of employment, and increasing evidence about the adverse impact of poor quality work. Recent writing and research has offered a reconceptualized QWL designed to address the contemporary challenges of the workplace.
Predictive Coding Theories of Cortical Function
Authors: Jiang Linxing Preston , Rao Rajesh P.N.
Published: November 2022

Predictive coding is a unifying framework for understanding perception, action, and neocortical organization. In predictive coding, different areas of the neocortex implement a hierarchical generative model of the world that is learned from sensory inputs. Cortical circuits are hypothesized to perform Bayesian inference based on this generative model. Specifically, the Rao–Ballard hierarchical predictive coding model assumes that the top-down feedback connections from higher to lower order cortical areas convey predictions of lower-level activities. The bottom-up, feedforward connections in turn convey the errors between top-down predictions and actual activities. These errors are used to correct current estimates of the state of the world and generate new predictions. Through the objective of minimizing prediction errors, predictive coding provides a functional explanation for a wide range of neural responses and many aspects of brain organization.
Teaching the Young Adult Novel in the United States
Authors: Hill Crag
Published: November 2022

Middle- and high-school English classrooms have incorporated literature in their curriculums for decades. Literature has been used for many purposes: to provide exemplary models for student writing, to serve as texts for honing interpretive skills, to expand vocabulary, to provide cultural insight, and to contribute to student’s cultural engagement and appreciation. Many of the literary texts used in classrooms in the past continue to be used, including Julius Caesar, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Lord of the Flies, To Kill a Mockingbird, and The Great Gatsby. These books continue to be used in part because there are many resources available that help teachers implement them in their curriculum but also because a lot of school districts do not have the funding to continually update the texts used in English classes. Today, however, there is another body of literature that teachers can draw from to meet curricular goals: young adult literature.
Slow Violence and Schooling
Authors: Higham Leanne
Published: November 2022

The concept of slow violence has broadened understandings of violence in ways that capture its spatial and temporal complexity, and that draw attention to its often-hidden operation. Since the 1960s and 1970s scholars of schooling and education have asked questions about power relations, inequalities, and injustices in schools, and in the early 21st century have turned their attention to affect and materiality. Although its conceptual predecessor, structural violence, has informed past education research, slow violence has not been widely taken up. This article explores the concept of slow violence, considering its relevance and use for education scholars concerned with the various mundane forms of violence enacted in schools, sometimes unintentionally, and often unnoticed. While the concept of slow violence is useful for thinking about everyday violence in this way, its real strength as a concept is lifted to view when considered in relation with affect in schooling and education.
The Imperial State and the Ruling Elite
Authors: Chen Song
Published: November 2022

The ruling elite of imperial China was composed of diverse groups, including imperial clansmen and in-laws, eunuchs and other palace attendants, as well as incumbents of a vast civil and military bureaucracy who had hailed, in some historical periods, from different social, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds. The distribution of power among these groups shifted constantly in tandem with the vagaries of political situations. Of these groups, the most prominent and best documented were the shi, who derived their status from a confluence of economic, social, political, and cultural resources. What it meant to be a shi and who qualified as a shi varied greatly over time. The first shi were men of talent who were recruited into government on account of their administrative, military, and diplomatic abilities, regardless of their family or regional origin. The rise of these shi was itself a corollary of China’s transition into the imperial era, which was marked by a persistent endeavor by warring states to build an effective bureaucratic administration staffed by capable men. Within a few centuries, however, the shi had become a semi-hereditary elite, comprising a relatively small number of families that monopolized high offices in government, resided in the capital, and married almost exclusively among themselves. This superelite dissipated in the 10th and 11th centuries, in the midst of a series of economic, social, and political changes that profoundly transformed the character of the shi as well as their relationship to the imperial state and local society. In the subsequent millennium, learning took precedent over pedigree and officeholding in defining shi status. Hence, the shi became a more inclusive epithet and was adopted by all men who had the education that qualified them for government service, thus blurring the distinction between government officials and a more diffuse stratum of local leaders. These transformations took place in the context of longue-durée economic and social changes from Song times onwards, including the growth of private wealth, the spread of printing, the expansion of the educated population, and the development of various local social institutions.
Soviet Collectivization in Central Asia
Authors: Kamp Marianne
Published: November 2022

In Soviet Central Asia, efforts at the mass collectivization of agriculture began in early 1930, and by 1935, more than 80 percent of all farming and herding households joined collective farms (kolkhoz) or state farms (sovkhoz). The Communist Party’s main purpose was to control peasant lives and labor. Collectivization was supposed to lead to increased agricultural production due to modernized methods and intensification. The USSR’s Central Asian republics were given unachievable plans to raise their output of cotton, wheat, and meat, while wealthier herders and peasants were threatened with arrest and exile if they resisted collectivization. Collectivization was devastating for Kazakh nomadic herders, whose livestock numbers plummeted, and who endured a three-year long famine that killed more than one-fourth of the Kazakh population. Investments went into expanding irrigation canals and irrigable fields, forcing an ever-increasing number of kolkhoz members to expend most of their labor on cotton cultivation.
The Chagos Archipelago
Authors: Carter Marina
Published: November 2022

The Chagos Archipelago comprises fifty-five Indian Ocean islands on five coral atolls, which were little known and uninhabited until the 18th century. Small exploratory settlements were set up by the French and British from the 1770s, but the archipelago was not permanently occupied until after the Napoleonic Wars. Collectively—with Agalega—known as the oil islands because of the exploitation of coconut plantations, the atolls were leased and later sold to Mauritian and Seychellois settlers who employed slaves and later nominally “free” laborers to collect, dehusk, and press the coconuts to produce oil. Economically in decline for most of the 20th century, the Chagos archipelago was controversially detached from Mauritius during independence negotiations in the 1960s and reconstituted as the British Indian Ocean Territory. Some 1,500 islanders were displaced and, as Chagossians, have engaged in a series of legal battles to reclaim their homeland. Currently only one island on the southernmost atoll—Diego Garcia—is occupied, utilized as an American military base; it was declared a Marine Protected Area in 2010. Mauritius has been internationally recognized to have the strongest claim to sovereignty of the archipelago but some Chagossians are calling for independent statehood.
The Making of the Maghrib: 1147–1500
Authors: Fromherz Allen
Published: November 2022

The Maghrib, “land of the setting sun” in Arabic, is the region of northwest Africa consisting of the countries of Tunisia, Algeria, Morocco, Libya, and, often, Mauritania. Even in flat, desert regions and plains of the Maghrib, the dominant geographical feature of the Maghrib is the Atlas Mountain range, looming over the horizon. These mountains not only create the geographic conditions for the desert, in terms of human geography, but they also form a massive, natural backbone and fortress from southern Morocco into Tunisia. For most of classical history the Atlas Mountains have been a great stumbling block for rulers. This changed in the early 12th century with the coming of the Almohads, who controlled the mountains and turned them into the heart of their empire. Before the Almohads, no power, not even the Romans, could claim to control the mountains. Instead, successive rulers tried to go around the range or to build fortifications at mountain passes, often in vain. Originating within the Atlas Mountains and maintaining their power all along its spine and into the southern Sierra Nevada of Iberia, the Almohads were the first to use the Atlas Mountains to their advantage. In doing so, they created the first unified, single polity across the Maghrib, originating too the idea that the Maghrib could be a politically united geographical space. Connections with Sahara and the Mediterranean could also now be strategically controlled. This era of Almohad unification, however, did not last long, a short fifty or sixty years from 1147 to the first decades of the 13th century, when the Almohad empire faced defeat from external forces and began a process of breaking apart into successor dynasties. Despite many later attempts to revive the Almohad model, no subsequent power was able to effectively restore the Almohad Empire’s reach across the Maghrib. Nonetheless, that unlikely and extraordinary success created the dream, or memory, of unification, one that continues to influence the people of the Maghrib.
Afro-Brazilians in West Africa
Authors: Ojo Olatunji
Published: November 2022

The Afro-Brazilians of West Africa refers to a community of people that was born in the 18th century and matured the 19th century in the course of trade exchanges between Brazil and West Africa. This is not a racial group but one united by a mixture of racial, commercial, cultural, and familial ties with a range of African, European, and American ancestries. The original foundation of the community emerged through the shipment of enslaved West Africans to Brazilian plantations. Upon liberation, many of these men and women, wanting to avoid a life of bondage and racial discrimination in the Americas, returned home to Africa. Others too old to leave Brazil or unwilling to abandon their American families and investments sent their Brazilian-born children back to Africa to see long-lost families and for business and education. There were also those descended from Brazilian traders who made Africa their home, sometimes marrying African wives, as well as their descendants and associates, free and unfree. Whether born in Africa or the Americas and regardless of color, the presence of Afro-Brazilians on both sides of the Atlantic necessitated intercontinental travels and exchanges and the birth of a transoceanic community. The history of Afro-Brazilians in West Africa has been a long and widely studied subject with a focus on its political and cultural contributions to the subregion.
International Trade and the Environment: Three Remaining Empirical Challenges
Authors: Cherniwchan Jevan , Taylor M. Scott
Published: November 2022

Considerable progress has been made in understanding the relationship between international trade and the environment since Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger published their now seminal working paper examining the potential environmental effects of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1991. Their work articulated a simple framework through which international trade and economic growth could affect the environment by impacting: the scale of economic activity (the scale effect), the composition of production across industries (the composition effect), or the emission intensity of individual industries (the technique effect). GK provided preliminary evidence of the relative magnitudes of the scale, composition and technique effects, and reached a striking conclusion: international trade would not necessarily harm the environment.

Much of the subsequent literature examining the effects of international trade and the environment has adopted Grossman and Krueger’s simple framework and builds directly from their initial foray into the area. We now have better empirical evidence of the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality, of how environmental regulations affect international trade and investment flows, and of the relative magnitudes of the scale, composition and technique effects.

Yet, the need for further progress remains along three key fronts. First, despite significant advances in our understanding of how economic growth affects environmental quality, evidence of the interaction between international trade, economic growth, and environmental outcomes remains scarce. Second, while a growing body of evidence suggests that environmental regulations significantly alter trade flows, it is still unclear if these policies have a larger or smaller effect than traditional determinants of comparative advantage. Third, although it is clear the technique effect is the primary driver of changes in pollution, evidence as to how trade has contributed to the technique effect is limited. Addressing these Three Remaining Challenges is necessary for assessing whether Grossman and Krueger’s conclusion that international trade need not necessarily harm the environment still holds today.
Monitoring and Evaluation of Sexual and Reproductive Health Programs
Authors: Barden-O'Fallon Janine , McCallum Erin
Published: November 2022

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) can be defined as the systematic collection, analysis, and use of data to answer questions about program performance and achievements. An M&E system encompasses all the activities related to setting up, collecting, reporting, and using program information. A robust, well-functioning M&E system can provide program stakeholders with the information necessary to carry out a responsive and successful program intervention and is therefore a critical tool for program management. There are many tools and techniques needed for successful M&E of sexual and reproductive health (SRH) programs. These include frameworks to visually depict the organization of the program, its context and goals, and the logic of its M&E system. Essential practices of M&E also include continuous stakeholder engagement, the development of indicators to measure program activities and outcomes, the collection and use of data to calculate the indicators, and the design and implementation of evaluation research to assess the benefits of the program.

Over time, language around “M&E” has evolved, and multiple variations of the phrase are in use, including “MEL” (monitoring, evaluation, and learning), “MER” (monitoring, evaluation, and reporting), and “MERL” (monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning), to name but a few. These terms bring to the forefront a particular emphasis of the M&E system, with an apparent trend toward the use of “MEL” to emphasize the importance of organizational learning. Despite this trend, “M&E” continues to be the most widely known and understood phrase and implicitly includes activities such as learning, research, and reporting within a robust system.
Brasília’s Experience With Wastewater Treatment Systems: A Case Study
Authors: Neder Klaus Dieter
Published: November 2022

Brasília is one of the few large cities in the developing world that provides full coverage of sanitation services for its population, including the collection of wastewater and adequate wastewater treatment. Caesb, the local water and sanitation utility, has developed a lot of experience in the planning, design, construction, and operation of sanitation systems, with a special emphasis on the need to use appropriate treatment technologies. Today, serving a population of more than three million people, Caesb runs 16 wastewater treatment plants, using technologies from very simple natural treatment processes, such as stabilization ponds and overland flow processes, to very sophisticated units, including tertiary activated sludge plants, with flotation as an effluent-polishing treatment step. During the development of the several different sanitation solutions, Caesb has found that it has been best to use simple, natural, low-cost treatment processes to achieve feasible and sustainable solutions even when, in specific circumstances, more sophisticated processes are required. The desire to increase the sustainability of the treatment plants has also stimulated Caesb to improve the performance of the applied treatment processes, which was achieved by the implementation of several modifications aimed at reducing costs and improving the efficiency of the plants. Today, the treatment of all wastewater produced in the city guarantees the quality of the discharge to the point that water bodies located downstream of wastewater treatment plants are used as resources for water supply for the city.
Changing Open Defecation Behavior
Authors: Radin Mark
Published: November 2022

Open defecation (OD) remains a persistent problem in many low-income countries. The international community, through the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has committed itself to eliminating OD by 2030. While access to and use of latrines has steadily increased, much is unknown on how to eliminate OD. The history of the elimination of OD in high-income countries offers potential lessons for achieving the sanitation targets of the SDGs. A desk review of sanitation literature revealed a well-documented effort to eliminate OD in the United States, which faced many of the same obstacles as those encountered in low-income countries in the 21st century. One of the important lessons is that eliminating OD takes sustained efforts over decades and substantial resources. The international efforts to eliminate OD have evolved through numerous phases within the global development agenda. To eliminate OD will require continued investment in new and ongoing programs, which are often led by national governments in partnership with international organizations, civil society, and the private sector. Many successful programs have utilized numerous approaches for eliminating OD as the barriers to sanitation use are different across societies and for each individual. Access to sanitation in institutions such as schools and health care facilities as well as public facilities remains a problem in both high- and low-income countries. Finally, the international community will need to deploy more resources and develop effective approaches for ensuring that latrine adoption and use is sustainable.
IR in Mexico
Authors: Santa-Cruz Arturo
Published: November 2022

Mexican International Relations (IR) is peculiar not only in that it stands apart from the contributions of both culturally similar countries, such as those in Latin America, and structurally similar positioned states, such as Canada, as well as from those originating in the United States, but also for its paucity.

Since very little IR theory is done in Mexico, it is not surprising that Mexican IR appears to be “an American social science.” However, beyond the syllabi in the discipline’s university departments throughout Mexico, the practice of what little IR research there is in the country is anchored in approaches that are not mainstream in the United States. Thus, counterintuitively, Mexican IR is very similar to IR in other countries—and U.S. IR, not Mexico’s, is an outlier.
Asian American Youth and Mexican American Youth in Los Angeles before World War II
Authors: Seong Leong Quintana Isabela
Published: November 2022

Though relatively little is known about them when compared with their adult counterparts, the experiences of Chinese American youth and Mexican American youth in Los Angeles were significantly shaped by living in the developing urban city. More independently as they became older, these ethnic youth navigated social structures that informed the racial, gendered, and class orderings of the city. As both Asian American and Mexican American adult populations in the Los Angeles area boomed before World War II, so did their youth populations, reflecting wars, changes in immigration law and policy, and the steady growth of the region’s railroad, manufacturing, and agriculture industries. With lives intimately tied to adults’ lives, both Asian American youth and Mexican American youth were a mix of recent arrivals from outside the United States and individuals who were born within its national borders. Their presences overlapped with those of their parents and other adults, in both private and public spaces where paid and unpaid labor took place. In ways that reflect the cultures of their respective communities of the era, young people utilized city spaces in different ways as they attended school, worked, socialized, and participated in community events and activities. Excluded from white-only institutions and social organizations, Asian American and Mexican American youth formed their own respective organizations and clubs. They brought dynamic life to Angeleno spaces as they navigated social and community expectations along with rapidly changing cultural and consumer trends.
Religion in the Homeric Hymns
Authors: Strauss Clay Jenny , Faulkner Andrew
Published: November 2022

The so-called Homeric Hymns are a collection of thirty-three poems from antiquity written in hexameter verse and addressed to a variety of divinities. They are called ‘Homeric’ because they are written in the same dialect and meter as the epic Homeric poems the Iliad and Odyssey. The origins and nature of the hymns are in fact diverse, as are their performance contexts in antiquity. The collection consists of five long hymns (to Dionysus, Demeter, Apollo, Hermes, and Aphrodite), two mid-length hymns, and short hymns of just a few lines. The Homeric Hymns are often classified as literary hymns, as opposed to cultic hymns, and are Panhellenic in nature. They nevertheless address gods and goddesses directly and to varying degrees engage with the establishment and realities of cultic worship.
An Environmental History of Brazil in the Nineteenth Century
Authors: Pádua José Augusto
Published: November 2022

Brazil’s political imagination under the monarchy sought to associate the grandeur of its territory with an idealized image of the national state under construction. Whether they praised or deplored Brazil’s natural setting, representations of the establishment of an enormous country in the tropics tended to be generic and superficial. Some men of science, however, followed a more pragmatic path, seeking to understand Brazil’s environmental diversity and criticizing the destructive use of its natural resources. A significant effort was made to distinguish among the various types of forests and savannas found within Brazil’s borders. As regions developed at different rates of economic and demographic density, this variety of natural formations influenced their growth in complex ways. The interaction was marked by four basic modes of socioeconomic activity: export agriculture; agriculture to supply local markets; ranching; and the extraction of flora, fauna, and minerals. Each of these modes entailed environmental problems. For the elites who controlled the pace and direction of regional occupation, however, the immensity of the territory produced a sense of unlimited frontier and abundance that made any concern for the conservation or cautious management of natural resources appear unnecessary. Meanwhile, the growth of cities, with their attendant problems of insalubrity and access to water, opened up a cosmopolitan space for intellectual and scientific debates. Several environmental themes such as climatic determinism and the relationship between slave-based agriculture and the destruction of soils and forests figured prominently in the cultural and political concerns of that age.
South Asian Diaspora in the Caribbean
Authors: Roopnarine Lomarsh
Published: November 2022

Labor demands following the abolition of slavery in the 19th century led to the arrival of five hundred thousand indentured South Asians between 1838 and 1920 in the plantation zones of the Caribbean. Of this total, two-thirds of them stayed in the Caribbean when their five-year contract expired while a third went back to their homeland of India. These indentured servants used their one-sided contracts to revive the post-slavery plantation system and to develop themselves and their communities. By the Second World War, these once cyclical migrants turned settlers had become a majority population in Guyana, Trinidad, and Suriname, as well as visible minorities in the French Caribbean, Jamaica, and the Lesser Antilles. In so doing, they have retained substantial aspects of their culture, customs, and religion while adapting to a creolized Caribbean. These Indians have contributed to nation-building in the Southern Caribbean in fields including leadership, law, medicine, and business. However, political and ethnic tensions arising from poor governance have led to the steady out-migration of this population from the Caribbean to Europe and North America, where they have experienced new challenges of integration while sending remittances to their Caribbean homeland. Nonetheless, Indians of South Asian background have maintained a different and distinct identity whenever and wherever they have settled in the Caribbean and overseas.
Canada’s Cultural Diplomacy toward Mexico during the NAFTA Era
Authors: Martínez-Zalce Graciela
Published: November 2022

Canadian cultural diplomacy has been inconsistent in recent decades. In the specific case of Mexico, the visibility of Canada is the result of the sum of public and private initiatives within independent and commercial circuits, as well as academic collaborations. In certain periods of the last few decades of Canadian history, it is possible to recognize policies aimed at projecting a specific image of Canada, which is constantly modified by precise political and economic conditions. In the twenty-five years of the North American Free Trade Agreement, three moments of cultural diplomacy toward Mexico can be recognized: a first intense period of creation of binational ties, a time of restrictions that affected strategic collaboration programs, and a renaissance characterized by interest in rethinking and systematizing the strategies of cultural exchange.