• Coping with chronic environmental contamination: Exploring the role of social capital

  Schmitt, Harrison J.; Sullivan, Daniel; Goad, Alexis N.; Palitsky, Roman; Department of Psychology, University of Arizona (Elsevier BV, 2022-10)

  The experience of chronic environmental contamination (CEC) is an increasingly prevalent environmental hazard faced by communities around the world. Evidence suggests that this experience can be psychologically stressful. However, CEC is an of often-overlooked environmental justice issue and collective action problem in the psychology literature. We explore the role of social capital as a buffer for the negative impacts of CEC using geographical (Study 1), qualitative (Study 2), and experimental (Study 3) methods. Study 1 shows that US county-level social capital buffers the relationship between air pollution and mental distress. Study 2 presents a qualitative analysis of 13 interviews conducted with people impacted by CEC in Tucson, AZ, focusing on sources of stress, coping mechanisms, and the role of social capital the CEC experience. Study 3 presents an experiment conducted with Tucson residents using a 2(CEC threat) × 2(perceptions of social capital induction) design to investigate the role of social capital in efficacy and defensive denial responses to CEC threat. Though the onset of CEC can damage networks of social capital (Study 2), increasing community perceptions of social capital may be an important avenue for future research (Study 3). We discuss the importance of mixed-methods approaches, as well as the importance of integrating theorizing on social capital into the psychology literature to address invisible and chronic stressors like CEC.
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  Palestriped Flea Beetle Control During Guayule Stand Establishment: Use the Right Special Local Needs Label!

  Ellsworth, Peter C; Pier, Naomi; University of Arizona Department of Entomology & Cooperative Extension (College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, University of Arizona (Tucson, AZ), 2022-10-04)

  Special Local Needs labels are issued by the State, subject to review by EPA. The Arizona Department of Agriculture has approved a new label for Bifenture® EC for use against palestriped flea beetles in guayule. This new label replaces three prior labels that were available only for a short time in the Spring of 2022.
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  Tangiball: Foot-Enabled Embodied Tangible Interaction with a Ball in Virtual Reality

  Bozgeyikli, Lai Lila; Bozgeyikli, Evren; University of Arizona, School of Information (IEEE, 2022-03)

  Interaction with tangible user interfaces (TUIs) in virtual reality (VR) is known to offer several benefits in terms of user experience. Incorporating identical-formed tangible objects for foot-enabled embodied interaction in VR is not a well-researched area. To address this gap, in this study, we explored foot-enabled embodied interaction in VR through a room-scale tangible soccer game (Tangiball). Users interacted with a physical ball with their feet in real time by seeing its virtual counterpart inside a VR head mounted display (HMD). Tangiball included a custom-built transparent physical ball, inside which motion trackers were secured using custom 3D-printed attachments. A between-subjects user study was performed with 40 participants, in which Tangiball was compared with the control condition of foot-enabled embodied interaction with a purely virtual ball. The results revealed that tangible interaction improved user performance and presence significantly, while no difference in terms of motion sickness was detected between the tangible and virtual versions. This paper discusses the development and evaluation of Tangiball along with implications of the user study results.
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  Property Law and Inequality: Lessons from Racially Restrictive Covenants

  Rose, C.M.; University of Arizona (Northwestern University School of Law, 2022-08-28)

  A long-standing justification for the institution of property is that it encourages effort and planning, enabling not only individual wealth creation but, indirectly, wealth creation for an entire society. Equal opportunity is a precondition for this happy outcome, but some have argued that past inequalities of opportunity have distorted wealth distribution in contemporary America. This article explores the possible role of property law in such a distortion, using the historical example of racially restrictive covenants in the first half of the twentieth century. I will argue that the increasing professionalization and standardization of real estate practices in that era included racial covenants to appeal to a predominately white market clientele, resulting in a curtailment of opportunities for African Americans to acquire wealth in real estate. Racial covenants have been unenforceable under constitutional law since 1948, but I will argue that they were also a distortion of standard property law and that they undermined the principles on which property law rests. Courts could have recognized this at the outset and later, but for some reasons that this article suggests, they did not, with long-lasting repercussions for racial wealth inequalities.
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  Ultra-Fine Pointing for Nanosatellite Telescopes with Actuated Booms

  Tracy, Kevin; Manchester, Zachary; Douglas, Ewan; Steward Observatory, University of Arizona (IEEE, 2022-03-05)

  The smallsat revolution has impacted the architecture of most modern satellites with the notable exception of fine-pointing space telescopes. Conventional attitude control hardware scales poorly as the spacecraft gets smaller, resulting in significant mass and performance penalties for nanosatellites with strict pointing requirements. This paper presents a novel attitude actuation and planning strategy that utilizes actuated booms with tip masses and magnetorquers for three-axis pointing and momentum desaturation. The speed of the booms is an appropriate match for the slowly varying environmental disturbance torques encountered in low-Earth orbit. As a result, these booms do not create the high-frequency jitter that reaction wheels do, lessening the need for complex second-stage correction hardware in the payload. An optimization-based motion planner is able to reason about the orbital ephemeris to ensure the booms never exceed their actuation limits, and a Linear Quadratic Gaussian controller is able to maintain fine-pointing during times of payload operation.

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