Nuclear fuel management is an optimization problem on many levels. Finding “viable” solutions for the core reload design problem is difficult without expert knowledge and software automation. Small modular reactors with a shared used fuel pool demonstrate a novel opportunity for fuel cycle optimization.
A Python package was developed and...
Environmental scientists, land managers, and policy actors are increasingly presented with high-stakes high-uncertainty problems stemming from human-ecosystem interactions. To help address these problems, scientists frequently use models that produce enormous geospatial and temporal datasets that are constantly modified and often seek input from communities outside their discipline. To assist scientists—as...
Increasing calls from stakeholders for a greater role in public decision making has led to the rapid world-wide adoption of multi stakeholder collaboration for policymaking. In line with this emerging trend the Government of Nepal with support from its long-time development partners and bi-lateral donors initiated a policy level experiment...
Climate change increases weather unpredictability, threatens communities whose livelihoods depend on natural resources, such as rural communities. Utilizing a Community Capital Framework (Flora and Flora, 2013) and Governance of Complex Adaptive Systems (Duit and Galaz, 2008), this study concentrated on the role of cultural and political capital in supporting rural...
The state of Oregon is divided in important ways along rural and urban lines, including the way people make a living, individual and group relationships with the natural world, political ideologies, and personal values. This rural-urban divide has assisted policymakers in making decisions that balance the needs of Oregonians on...
Dead wood patterns and dynamics vary with biophysical factors, disturbance history, ownership, and management practices. Through field and modeling studies, I examined the current and potential future amounts of dead wood in two landscapes and region-wide in the Coastal Province of Oregon. The objectives of the first study were to...
Background:
The number of people diagnosed with chronic physical conditions is increasing in the United States. Chronic mental illnesses are also common in the country. Low-income women and those on Medicaid bear a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions and these conditions significantly contribute to obstetric morbidity. Prioritizing preventive measures and...
Improving access to and uptake of antenatal care remains a persistent challenge for India. It is a far greater challenge for an underdeveloped, poorer and mostly rural state like Bihar. The 2015-16 National Family Health Survey (NFHS-IV) of India reported that only 3% pregnant women in rural Bihar utilized full...
In this work, I address foundational concerns at the interface of institutions, governance structure, transaction costs, and efficiency in public-private contracting. Following transaction cost economic perspective, I build and justify the theoretical models explaining that institutions may affect the economic performance of public-private contracting through the effect of transaction costs....
Since the 1890s, American federalism has been perceived as being unique in the world by having two different levels of government operating within the same jurisdiction without influencing one another. Modern scholars call into question the validity of this basic assumption, but few have published quantitative evidence to reject its...