Programs and Communities

An increase in population and need to protect the planet has created many initiatives and research goals in developing alternatives methods of fueling. Federal and state policies have provided a push for industries to find ways to of reducing their impact on the environment while maintaining competitiveness. In the sector of alternative fuels, large policies such as the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS) in the United States are making goals to reduce vehicular fuel from coal and oil, and focus on alternative fuels such as ethanol and biodiesel. Along with the RFS and other federal policies, states are introducing independent initiatives to promote the use of alternative fuels.

Research has shown that other crops besides corn can feasibly be used to produce ethanol for fuel use. One of the major crops of interest currently is switchgrass (Panicum Virgatum L.) because of its ability to grow under a variety of weather conditions and soil types. Switchgrass does not require as much maintenance as corn and is a perennial grass that can have high yielding fields for up to 9 years.

This report focuses on the impacts from using switchgrass-derived ethanol to meet the state of Arizona’s policy to have government fleet vehicles operating on alternative fuels. The study uses a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach to evaluate 22 million gallons of ethanol produced in Arizona and stored at fueling stations for use. Impacts in land use, global warming, and water quality are evaluated using software tools and databases in Ecoinvent and Simapro.

The results of the study indicate that the cultivation and harvest phase of the process will contribute the most to negative environmental impacts. According to the study, application of heavy nutrient fertilizer and the machinery needed for the additional agriculture have the potential to contribute over 36 million moles of hydrogen and 89 million CTU eq. to the air, soil, and water.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has affected employment and food security globally and in the United States. To understand the impacts of COVID-19 on food security in Arizona, a representative survey of Arizona households was launched online from July 1 to August 10, 2020. This brief provides an overview of changes in food security rate, perceived worries and challenges about food security, as well as behavioral changes and strategies adopted since the pandemic. Additional briefs from the Arizona survey covering topics on economic consequences, food access, and participations in food assistance programs during the pandemic are also available.

The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic led to disruptions in the food supply and high rates of unemployment and under-employment, both in Arizona and nationally. These emergencies required food assistance programs to adapt quickly and in unprecedented ways by relaxing eligibility criteria, improvising on delivery modalities, and increasing benefits. To examine food assistance program participation during the pandemic, we collected data from a representative sample of 620 Arizona households. The sample was drawn from across Arizona in July-August 2020 using an online survey. This brief provides the summary for participation in key food assistance programs, namely, the Supplementary Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the Special Supplemental Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC), School Food Programs, and the emergency food assistance provided through food pantries.

With more than 19 million confirmed COVID-19 cases across the United States1 and over 500,000 in Arizona as of December 2020, the ongoing pandemic has had devastating impacts on local, national, and global economies. Prior to the pandemic (February 2020), based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, the unemployment rate in Arizona was 6.5%, compared to 4.9% at the national level.3 Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic (March 2020), the United States has experienced striking increases in the unemployment rate, reaching 13.2% in April. Similarly, in Arizona, the unemployment rate jumped to over 13.5% in April. The unemployment rates have since declined both nationally and in Arizona but remain higher compared to February 2020. In November 2020 (the most recent data available), the national unemployment rate was 6.7%, while in Arizona the rate was 7.8%—the 10th highest unemployment rate among all U.S. states.

This project is creating a non-profit green building organization called AZ Build Green Coalition. There is currently no statewide neutral organization for knowledge sharing about various green building initiatives throughout Arizona. Multiple municipalities in the state are now interested in and starting to execute green building initiatives through varied processes. Yet, each municipality is remaking the wheel and select green building champions in each city usually lead these efforts without a lot of funding or capacity. A central source for knowledge sharing and education would be instrumental in facilitating faster and more efficient movements with green building initiatives and codes. For example, the city of Scottsdale is in the process of being the first municipality in the nation to adopt the newest version of the International Green Construction Code (IgCC). This project has been involved in and aided in that initiative. The city of Tempe has initiated three IgCC 2018 pilot projects. Other municipalities in the state are interested in the IgCC and several have previously adopted it on a voluntary basis. Sharing resources and code approval barriers through a central forum would be beneficial for faster progress and also navigating the political barriers more effectively. The non-profit aims to assist with this collaboration and future high performance building initiatives through tools such as: public presentations, a central sharable document repository, an online presence, and other collaborative tools.

Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, Cinema Issue (2016)

Robert Desnos’s and Man Ray’s 1928 film L'Etoile de mer has long been considered an exemplar of the surrealist love story, thematically similar to Salvador Dalí’s and Luis Buñuel’s Un Chien andalou (1929) but less overtly shocking. In comparison to the elaborate iconographical analyses of Chien, critiques of L'Etoile tend to describe its avant-garde cinematic style, to distinguish how it illustrates or deviates from Desnos’s scenario, or to provide summary analysis of some of its more obviously Freudian iconography. There have been fewer scholarly explorations of specific symbolism, yet the film exhibits many political-philosophical intertexts, one of which explicitly builds a bridge between the surrealist revolution and America’s core self-signifier, Liberty.

Journal of Surrealism and the Americas, Cinema Issue (2016)

La Ciudad Frente al Río (The City in Front of the River) is an Argentinian, ten-minute long film directed by Italian Surrealist Enrico Gras in 1949. The film was part of the promotional material for Bajo Belgrano, a modern housing plan sponsored by the Buenos Aires City Hall under the auspice of populist president Juan Perón. As part of this promotion, German photographer Grete Stern designed a brochure with images from the film and text by the Study for the Plan of Buenos Aires (Estudio del Plan de Buenos Aires, hereafter EPBA). I compare the film and brochure to contemporaneous work by Stern: a series of photomontages illustrating a women’s advice column. The column mined its readers’ dreams for insights into their unconscious, and advised them on proper behavior. Following a similar method, the film found Buenos Aires’ unconscious in the chaos of city life, and revealed what I have termed as "pastoral modernity" as the cure. Masked behind a veneer of revolutionary modernity, the message of these works was that of a nostalgic return to the past—an invitation to sleep, and to dream. Complicating this message, subtle hints in both the film and the photomontages point to the artists’ awareness of the totalizing vision they were collaborating with.