The Laura Bassi Scholarship, which will award a total of $10,000 twice per annum, was established by Editing Press in 2018 with the aim of providing editorial assistance to postgraduates and junior academics whose research focuses on neglected topics of study, broadly construed. The scholarships are open to every discipline and are awarded in December and April:
Winter 2018
Application deadline: 25 November 2018
Results: 15 December 2018
Spring 2019
Application deadline: 25 March 2019
Results: 15 April 2019
All currently enrolled master’s and doctoral candidates are eligible to apply, as are academics in the first five years of their employment. Applicants are required to submit a completed application form along with their CV to scholarships@editing.press by the relevant deadline. Further details and application form: https://editing.press/bassi.html
Indroneil Ganguly
Assistant Professor and Associate Director of the Center for International Trade in Forest Products (CINTRAFOR), School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, https://environment.uw.edu/faculty/indroneil-ganguly/
Most of us do not realize the level of pollution created by ‘open burning’ of massive volumes of harvest waste, from agricultural and forestry activities, in the Pacific Northwest (PNW). For some of the PNW states, the particulate matter emitted (especially bad for human health) from these ‘planned burns’ are greater than that from their vehicular emissions. The residual woody biomass (a.k.a. harvest slash) produced during forest harvest operations in the Pacific Northwest is also generally collected into piles and burned and/or left on the forest floor to decompose. Producing drop-in biofuels from this residual cellulosic feedstock can provide an alternative use for this unused resource while simultaneously displacing petroleum based fuels. Utilizing a ‘Woods-to-Wake’ (WoTW) Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) approach, which is comparable to a Well-to-Wake (WTW) LCA for petroleum based aviation fuel, this paper assesses the environmental implications of feedstock recovery, production, and utilization of residual woody biomass based biojet fuel. In this presentation, I will also discuss a comparative assessment of the environmental implications of substituting petroleum-based jet fuel with that of residual woody biomass based biojet fuel.
WCPC Seminar Series on Poverty and Public Policy
“The Impact of SNAP Time Limits on Household Food Insecurity”
SARAH CHARNES
Evans School of Public Policy & Governance
*Q&A until 2:00 pm
Recently, the U.S. political system has seen a groundswell in rhetoric regarding work requirements for recipients of social safety net programs. This has been characterized both by moves to revive work requirements that were introduced by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (PRWORA), and to introduce new work requirements all together. One such work requirement stemming from PRWORA applies to beneficiaries of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP). Eligible recipients who are “able-bodied adults without dependents” (“ABAWDs”) are subject to a three-month limitation on SNAP receipt within a 36-month period, unless they meet specific employment or training requirements. However, work requirements for ABAWDs can be temporarily waived in geographic areas where unemployment is high or where there is a lack of available jobs.
Because of the systematically high unemployment rates that followed the Great Recession, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA) offered all states the ability to suspend ABAWD work requirements without having to seek federal approval as of April 1, 2009. Most states followed suit for several years. Some states have since begun to reinstate work requirements in some or all counties, at a staggered pace.
Through their influence on SNAP participation, the reinstatement of work requirements may also be consequential for SNAP recipients’ household food insecurity status. This study evaluates the effect of work requirements on the presence and depth of household food insecurity of ABAWD households.
Anthropology Dissertation Colloquium
Rob Tennyson
Biological Anthropology Graduate Student
The UW Office of Research has just launched a valuable new web tool, Shared Research Facilities and Resources. The tool offers an index of resources that include essential services, advanced instrumentation, and technical expertise needed for cutting-edge research. This searchable list of detailed profile pages can be found on the Collaboration Tab on the Research home page.
You can find CSDE’s equipment, facilities and research assistance listed here. CSDE advances research and training in population sciences through the provision of advanced computing and data resources; Biomarker, demographic, geospatial, statistical consultation and analyses; and formal and informal training programs.
Demography students: Professor and CSDE Affiliate Adrian Raftery, Statistics & Sociology, will be teaching Statistical Demography (CSSS/STAT/SOC 563) this Spring 2019. The course covers statistical methods and models for estimating and forecasting population quantities and covers a variety of innovative topics, including probabilistic population projections and Bayesian hierarchical models.
Please note that you must first complete the prerequisites or receive permission from the instructor. The perquisites are STAT 509/CS&SS 509/ECON 509, or STAT 513. College of Arts & Sciences and Evans School students have priority in Period I of registration. Other students may register afterward.
CSDE’s Executive Committee is pleased to introduce four of our new regional affiliates:
- George Hough – Education Research Analyst at the Education Research and Data Center. Hough’s recent research has focused on improving data from the ACS, applications of the State Longitudinal Data Systems, and records linking high school students to postsecondary attendance, achievement and labor force participation.
- Jamaica Corker – Program Officer for Data & Evaluation, Family Planning Program at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Corker’s research has focused on fertility and family planning in sub-Saharan Africa, migration and urbanization, and linking demography and GIS.
- Marlaine Gray – Research Associate at Kaiser Permanente. Gray has researched how the intersection of creative practices and medical care inform biomedical care, evidence that a creative activities “work,” and how arts activities can serve as a model of better, more patient-and-family centered care.
- Christine Galavotti – Senior Program Officer, Family Planning at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Galavotti’s interests include gender and social change programming, participatory governance approaches, and quality improvement strategies for reproductive and maternal health outcomes.
These affiliates bring a wealth of knowledge and unique approaches that enhances our community of demographers and collectively advances population science. We look forward to supporting each of them as they pursue their research. You can learn more about their individual research interests by visiting their affiliate pages, linked above.
If you are interested in becoming an affiliate or you know of someone who should become one, you can invite them to do so by directing them to this page. Affiliate applications are reviewed quarterly, by CSDE’s Executive Committee.
Mark your calendar! The Computational Demography Working Group is meeting twice this quarter. On November 15, Tim Thomas will give an Introduction to Git and Github.com Workflows. His workshop will draw on his own expertise as well as materials from the Software Carpentry project. On December 6, Connor Gilroy, Neal Marquez and Lee Fiorio will conduct an open discussion of the possibilities and limitations of Conducting Demographic Research with Facebook Ads Data. They will describe ongoing research projects and recent debates around so-called “digital trace data” in demographic research.
The Computational Demography Working Group meets regularly to provide an interdisciplinary forum for discussions of digital and computational approaches to demographic research. The workshop features a range of paper presentations, methods demonstrations and software tutorials. Plus there will be free pizza!
Introduction to Git and Github Workflows
Git is an industry and academic standard for version-controlling computer files (i.e. tracking changes) and collaborating with multiple people. Github is an online platform designed for maintaining git repositories for sharing and developing reproducible work. In this workshop, you will learn workflow standards for these powerful tools.
Date: 11/15/2018
Time: 12:00-1:30 PM
Location: 114 Raitt Hall
Conducting Demographic Research with Facebook Ad Data
Facebook’s business model is to sell targeted advertisements based on user demographics, behavior and interests. To help potential advertisers design an ad and stage an advertising campaign, Facebook provides estimates of “audience size” given the targeted demographic.
In this meeting, Connor Gilroy, Neal Marquez and Lee Fiorio will host an open discussion about the possibilities and limitations of using FacebookAds data on audience size to estimate the characteristics of populations and improve population estimates where data are missing or data quality is poor. The discussion will focus on recent work Connor, Neal and Lee have all conducted using FacebookAds data and on issues of working with non-traditional digital data more broadly.
Date: 12/06/2018
Time: 12:00-1:30 PM
Location: 114 Raitt Hall
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Andrew Noymer, Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, University of California, Irvine
The 1918 “Spanish” influenza pandemic was the deadliest disease outbreak since the when Black Death roiled Eurasia in the mid-fourteenth century. Worldwide mortality estimates are 50–100 million. It remains by far the deadliest outbreak of influenza, ever. One of the persistent myths of the 1918 flu is that, because it was so severe, that it killed neutrally: rich and poor alike, and so on. This talk will focus on the experience in the United States, and on the medium-term impact of the pandemic. In 1919, there is a pivot downward in the death rate of tuberculosis (TB), which was the major infectious disease of adults in the United States in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This sudden down-trend of TB is a consequence of mortality among the tuberculous in 1918. The influenza pandemic thus influenced the epidemiology of other diseases. Given the major social class differences associated with TB at the time, the 1918 flu should not be regarded as a “socially neutral” disease.
Andrew Noymer is an associate professor in the Department of Population Health & Disease Prevention, at the University of California, Irvine. His work focuses on the demography of infectious diseases, and the length of life. Noymer’s work looks at infectious diseases as a product of social and biological interaction, focusing on disease at the population level, but grounded in the underlying biology. Among other topics, he has published on life expectancy, and on the epidemiology of infectious diseases, most recently, measles, polio, and influenza. Other recent work has focused on new dataviz and analytic techniques for demography, particularly using convex hulls. Prof Noymer received his PhD in sociology from UC Berkeley, his MSc in medical demography from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, and his AB in biology from Harvard.
Click here to schedule a meeting with Professor Noymer.
IPUMS (Integrated Public Use Microdata Series) has requested that researchers comment on Federal Register Notice 83 FR 34111, regarding the use of Census Bureau data products. The comment period expires on November 8, 2018. See request below:
“The Census Bureau is planning a fundamental revision of its procedures for ensuring the confidentiality of public use data. The proposed new disclosure avoidance system relies on injecting noise with formal privacy rules, based on theories of differential privacy. It is not clear how this new disclosure avoidance system will be implemented, but there is significant danger that it will reduce or even eliminate the usability of public use data for many common research and policy applications.
It is crucial that the research community responds to the call for comments by explaining how we use the American Community Survey (ACS) and decennial census data. Although the Federal Register Notice only addresses 2020 census products, the Census Bureau is planning to use similar techniques for ACS, and it is vital that they take uses of the ACS microdata into account. Complex applications that use data from multiple levels—such as the characteristics of individuals, their family members, community characteristics, and so on—may be especially relevant to the discussion.
The stakes are high. If we lose statistically valid public census data, it will be an enormous setback to government transparency, social science, and policy formation. I hope that comments from the community will persuade the Census Bureau to proceed with caution and to engage in robust discussion with the research community about the costs and benefits of new disclosure avoidance methods.
Please send at least a brief comment describing your work with microdata or summary files from the ACS or the decennial census. You may respond to the Federal Register Notice by emailing POP.2020.DataProducts@census.gov, referencing Federal Register Notice 83 FR 34111. I would appreciate it if you copy us at ipums@umn.edu.”