The United States has a long history of domestic terrorism, yet U.S. counterterrorism policy has focused almost completely on the threat from international terrorism. The gap in the literature was the absence of an empirical evaluation of U.S. counterterrorism policy on domestic terrorism in general. The purpose of this quantitative study was to describe the impact of 21st century U.S. counterterrorism policy on incidence, lethality, and cost of domestic terrorism using data from the Global Terrorism Database. The multiple streams framework and the power elite theory were used. In this longitudinal trend study using secondary data analysis, domestic terrorism data were analyzed from 749 terrorist attacks using descriptive statistics, visual analysis, and the series hazard model to examine any changes in the frequency and hazard of domestic terrorism in relation to the following 5 policies: USA PATRIOT Act, USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act, Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, Implementing Recommendations of the 9/11 Commission Act, and USA FREEDOM Act. The results empirically supported the greater threat of domestic terrorism and showed that domestic terrorism changed in relation to counterterrorism policy. Further, the addition of the series hazard model in the analysis of domestic terrorism following policy implementation added additional depth to the results. This study contributed to positive social change by providing policy makers and counterterrorism agencies with an empirical, evidence-based method for evaluating U.S. counterterrorism policy and for a non-partisan, non-political, evidence-based method for quantitatively determining terrorist threat.

INTRODUCTION: Studies have shown that school-based childhood obesity programs can be effective, however, little is known about the effects of policy and environmental changes on student health outcomes. This study assessed the policy, environmental, and BMI percentile changes of 32 Georgia elementary schools participating in HealthMPowers programming. METHODS: This thesis used multilevel analysis to examine the changes to policy and environmental indicators within school participating in HealthMPowers and the extent to which these indicators predict BMI percentile change of 5th grade students. This research evaluated seven key indicators related to policy and environmental changes within 32 schools and the BMI percentile changes of 3458 students over the 2011-2012 academic year. Multilevel regression models were used to estimate the effects of school policy and environmental changes on mean BMI percentiles. RESULTS: Only 12 schools experienced a decrease in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test, whereas 17 schools experienced increases in mean BMI percentiles. Students who were at or above the 85th percentile did not change significantly from baseline to post-test. For physical activity, schools that reported positive or no change in this indicator reported statistically significant increases in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. Schools that increased their CITT scores for physical education, school health team, assessment, and environment and policy indicators experienced, on average, a non-statistically significant increase in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. Schools that increased their CITT scores for improvement plan and communication experienced, on average, a non-statistically significant decrease in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. Schools that reported no change to their CITT scores for physical education, assessment, and environment and policy indicators experienced, on average, a non-statistically significant increase in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. Schools that reported no change for CITT scores for the school health team, improvement plan, and communication indicators experienced, on average, a non-statistically significant decrease in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. Lastly, when the school health team, assessment, improvement plan, and communication indicators were combined, schools who reported positive or no changes experienced, on average, a non-statistically significant increase in mean BMI percentiles from baseline to post-test. CONCLUSION: The findings of this study were inconclusive but do shed light on the importance of understanding system level policy and environmental change on individual level health outcomes. Additional research should be conducted to explore this relationship as well as evaluation of the Continuous Improvement Tracking Tool that HealthMPowers uses to help schools better capture the current state of their programs, policies, and environment in regards to student and staff health.

The world’s demand for energy has steadily increased in recent years, driven by economic and population growth, coupled with the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, using fossil fuels to meet the energy demand has led to various environmental and social problems, including air pollution, climate change, and geopolitical conflicts. As a result, there has been a growing interest in shifting from fossil energy to green energy sources, which offer a cleaner, and often more cost-effective alternative. This essay will explore the opportunities and challenges of transitioning from fossil energy to renewable energy, with a focus on the economic, environmental, and social implications of this shift, throughout the current state of renewable energy technologies and their potential for widespread adoption, as well as the political and regulatory frameworks that facilitate or hinder this transition. The essay also provides an empirical literature overview of the costs and benefits of transitioning from fossil fuels to renewable energy, including the impact on the environment and employment. I argue that while the transition to renewable energy will not be easy, it is necessary to ensure a sustainable future for our planet and future generations

India's electricity system is faced with the challenges of meeting the growing demand for electricity, managing recurring shortages in supply and addressing concerns of global warming. India is adopting a two-pronged approach to address these challenges – (i) making huge investments in new technologies, and (ii) enacting new policies to promote low carbon initiatives. Together, they are believed to help in achieving energy security as well as mitigation of global warming. Such low carbon initiatives can alter the traditional electricity planning and provide with a wide set of supply options to achieve a transition in to a low carbon electricity planning (LCEP). At the outset, one has to explore the supply options for an optimal supply-demand matching of electricity. While finding out various alternatives to meet the demand on a continuous basis using existing supply, non-supply and future supply options, the technology challenges of low carbon options, renewable energy policies and emissions policies need to be studied in detail from the perspective of a developing country keeping India as a focus. The effectiveness of renewable energy and emissions policy interventions such as Renewable Purchase Obligation (RPO), Renewable Energy Certificate (REC), Renewable Energy Certificate Excess (RECX), Emission Tax and Emission Cap-and-Trade and emission policies need to be assessed. Based on the analysis of the literature review, it appears that there is no mathematical model for optimally matching the supply with electricity demand simultaneously considering all the complexities for LCEP discussed in this study. The overall objective of the research is to develop, validate and apply a set of mathematical models to address a complex research problem of "LCEP of existing supply, non-supply and future supply options in the presence of technology and policy interventions to achieve a least-cost, low carbon and sustainable electricity system". This complex research problem is decomposed into five independent LCEP problems based on real-life situations. For each of these five LCEP problems, a mathematical model is proposed. For generating the five proposed mathematical models for any given data, LINGO Set Codes have been developed. In order to validate the proposed mathematical models, data was collected from the Karnataka state electricity system. For the collected data, the proposed mathematical models are generated using the LINGO Set Codes and solved using LINGO. From the optimal solutions, insights are drawn on the impact and effectiveness of low carbon interventions on the present electricity system which is in a transition towards a low carbon electricity system. It is our belief that the proposed mathematical models can act as a basis for introducing any new low carbon interventions such as energy efficiency certificates, auction based tariff mechanisms for renewable energy pricing, and other new REC interventions in the future scope.

Made available in DSpace on 2016-04-27T19:30:26Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Fabricio Herbeth Teixeira da Silva.pdf: 19455793 bytes, checksum: 3c60ec3b46081985f348aa1e576ae8af (MD5) Previous issue date: 2011-10-28 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / This dissertation examines the relationships between public officials and marching in formation of monopolies and control the market supply of fresh meat, in Bethlehem, from the discourses of scarcity of this kind between the years 1897-1909. It also analyzes the publications of the press at the time on the issue of green meat and interventionist strategies of the government in providing this food. Assuming that the lack of meat was a political creation and fruit of the action of the marchers, selected years, would overcome such occurrences, thus the explanations linked in climate problems, diseases, in theft and transportation, among others, as was recurrent the official rhetoric, the journalists of the time and in the chronicles of foreign travelers, and respected by the authors of the scarce work on this theme in the Amazon region / Esta dissertação analisa as relações entre os administradores públicos e os marchantes, na formação de monopólios e no controle do mercado de abastecimento da carne verde, em Belém, a partir dos discursos de escassez desse gênero entre os anos de 1897-1909. Analisa ainda as publicações da imprensa da época sobre a questão das carnes verdes e as estratégias intervencionistas do governo no fornecimento desse alimento. Pressupondo que a falta de carne foi uma criação política e fruto da ação dos marchantes, nos anos selecionados, tais ocorrências superariam, desse modo, as explicações pautadas em problemas climáticos, em doenças, em roubos e no transporte, entre outros, como era recorrente nos discursos das autoridades, dos jornalistas da época e nas crônicas dos viajantes estrangeiros, e acatados pelos autores dos parcos trabalhos existentes sobre o tema, na região Amazônica

This work follows the studies focused on obesity, its global extent and its serious health and economic impact. At the same time, the work examines the unsuccessful fight of public policies which try to reverse growing prevalence of obesity. Nevertheless, the main goal of the thesis is a discussion about priorities of new orientation in the research on the causes of the obesity epidemic and effectiveness of precautions that were taken in many countries and international organizations with the main aim to stop the obesity and its consequences. The discussion leads to the more detailed description of the problems connected with obesity, for instance, environmental aspects, housing culture in relation to physical activities, lifestyle in relation to advertisement/marketing, psychological and socio- psychological aspects, combating stress, etc. My intention was to find out utility of contemporary research on obesity for setting of policy fighting against obesity. At the same time, I wanted to find out other possible directions in the research into this field and discover how the discussion about priorities of the research in the experimental community proceeds. Two international dimensions of paradigmatic approaches separated to the certain degree can be considered as relevant with regard to the global...