Stanford University

Environment

FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.

Japan in the World: National Security Trajectories in Space Policy

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The event is jointly sponsored by the Japan Program at the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center and the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership.

 

Japan is one of the world’s most prominent military space powers around. With the inescapable ambiguity of dual-use, Japan has acquired its impressive capabilities in full view of a pacifist public and under constitutional constraints. At this stage, as the country races to keep abreast of the latest space technology trends, its national security trajectories are openly and officially sanctioned in both law and policy. These realities are not well understood by Japan’s allies or rivals, which limits our appreciation about where Japan is headed in its own national interest in the region, the world, and beyond.  

 

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Saadia M. Pekkanen works on outer space security, law, and policy. Her regional expertise is in the international relations of Japan/Asia. She earned Master’s degrees from Columbia University and Yale Law School, and a doctorate from Harvard University in political science. She holds the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professorship at the University of Washington (UW). She has published a half-dozen books on space technology and geopolitics, and is working now on The Age of Newspace. She serves as Co-Chair of the U.S. Japan Space Forum, directs both the Space Security Initiative (SSI) and the project on Emerging Frontiers in Space at UW, and is the founding co-director of the Space Policy and Research Center (SPARC) at UW. She is passionate about contributing to the educational ecosystem for fostering the space sector through bridge-the-gap activities, and is a member of the Washington State Space Coalition (WSSC). She is also a contributor for Forbes on the space industry (https://www.forbes.com/sites/saadiampekkanen/#5897783f7d3f).

Saadia Pekkanen, Professor, University of Washington
Seminars
Japan Colloquium Series

Elephants Are Just Like Us: Lessons Learned

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In a species that has so many similarities to humans both physically and psychologically, Professor O’Connell-Rodwell will share striking parallels between elephants and humans and touch on lessons learned for conservation and human medicine.

Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell is an adjunct professor in otolaryngology, head & neck surgery at Stanford University School of Medicine and a world-renowned expert on elephants. She has dedicated the past 25 years of her research career studying elephant communication and how their societies are constructed and maintained. An accomplished author of works ranging from children’s books to non-fiction to photography to novels, are all centered around elephants.
Her essays have appeared in a number of popular magazines, including Smithsonian Magazine, The Writer and Africa Geographic. Dr. O’Connell-Rodwell is the co-founder and CEO of the nonprofit organization Utopia Scientific dedicated to research and science education. She has taught Science Writing for Stanford University and The New York Times Knowledge Network. She and her husband have a production company, Triple Helix Productions, where they develop and produce entertaining science narratives for a popular audience. Information about her books can be found at http://www.caitlineoconnell.com.
 
To register, please visit: https://www.eventbank.cn/event/15197
 
Adjunct Professor in Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery

Stanford Center at Peking University
The Lee Jung Sen Building
Langrun Yuan
Peking University
No.5 Yiheyuan Road
Haidian District
Beijing, P.R.China 100871

Tel: +86.10.6274.4170

 

Caitlin O’Connell-Rodwell Adjunct Professor in Otolaryngology, Head & Neck Surgery Stanford University School of Medicine
Lectures

Atomic Homefront: screening and discussion

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The film screening of Atomic Homefront will be followed by a discussion with Human Rights Watch’s Marcos Orellana, Prof. Rod Ewing, and Lauren Davis (Director, Energy Program, 11th Hour Project). The conversation will be moderated by Michael Kieschnick (President, Green Advocacy Project). Atomic Homefront is a documentary about one community’s fight for environmental justice. 

Directed by Oscar-nominated filmmaker Rebecca Cammisa (Which Way Home, Sister Helen), Atomic Homefront is a documentary about one community’s activism and the need for government accountability in the wake of decades of radioactive waste contamination in the northern suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri.

 

Menlo-Atherton Center for the Performing Arts, 555 Middlefield Rd, Atherton, CA 94027

Marcos Orellana Director, Environment & Human Rights Human Rights Watch

Rodney C. Ewing

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E203
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 725-8641
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1946-2024
Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies
Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security
Professor of Geological Sciences
rodewingheadshot2014.jpg MS, PhD

      Rod Ewing was the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and Co-Director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and a Professor in the Department of Geological Sciences in the School of Earth, Energy and Environmental Sciences at Stanford University. He was also the Edward H. Kraus Distinguished University Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, where he had faculty appointments in the Departments of Earth & Environmental Sciences, Nuclear Engineering & Radiological Sciences and Materials Science & Engineering.  He was a Regents' Professor Emeritus at the University of New Mexico, where he was a member of the faculty from 1974 to 1997. Ewing received a B.S. degree in geology from Texas Christian University (1968, summa cum laude) and M.S. (l972) and Ph.D. (l974, with distinction) degrees from Stanford University where he held an NSF Fellowship.    His graduate studies focused on an esoteric group of minerals, metamict Nb-Ta-Ti oxides, which are unusual because they have become amorphous due to radiation damage caused by the presence of radioactive elements. Over the past thirty years, the early study of these unusual minerals has blossomed into a broadly-based research program on radiation effects in complex ceramic materials.  In 2001, the work on radiation-resistant ceramics was recognized by the DOE, Office of Science – Decades of Discovery as one of the top 101 innovations during the previous 25 years. This has led to the development of techniques to predict the long-term behavior of materials, such as those used in radioactive waste disposal.

      He was the author or co-author of over 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He had published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in over 100 different ISI journals. He was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium.  He was a Founding Editor of the magazine, Elements, which is now supported by 17 earth science societies. He was a Principal Editor for Nano LIFE, an interdisciplinary journal focused on collaboration between physical and medical scientists. In 2014, he was named a Founding Executive Editor of Geochemical Perspective Letters and appointed to the Editorial Advisory Board of Applied Physics Reviews.

      Ewing had received the Hawley Medal of the Mineralogical Association of Canada in 1997 and 2002, a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2002, the Dana Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2006, the Lomonosov Gold Medal of the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2006, a Honorary Doctorate from the Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2007, the Roebling Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2015, Ian Campbell Medal of the American Geoscience Institute, 2015, the Medal of Excellence in Mineralogical Sciences from the International Mineralogical Association in 2015, the Distinguished Public Service Medal of the Mineralogical Society of America in 2019, and was a foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He was also a fellow of the Geological Society of America, Mineralogical Society of America, Mineralogical Society of Great Britain and Ireland, American Geophysical Union, Geochemical Society, American Ceramic Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society. He was elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering in 2017.

      He was president of the Mineralogical Society of America (2002) and the International Union of Materials Research Societies (1997-1998). He was the President of the American Geoscience Institute (2018). Ewing had served on the Board of Directors of the Geochemical Society, the Board of Governors of the Gemological Institute of America and the Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.

      He was co-editor of and a contributing author of Radioactive Waste Forms for the Future (North-Holland Physics, Amsterdam, 1988) and Uncertainty Underground – Yucca Mountain and the Nation’s High-Level Nuclear Waste (MIT Press, 2006).  Professor Ewing had served on thirteen National Research Council committees and board for the National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine that have reviewed issues related to nuclear waste and nuclear weapons. In 2012, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as the Chair of the Nuclear Waste Technical Review Board, which is responsible for ongoing and integrated technical review of DOE activities related to transporting, packaging, storing and disposing of spent nuclear fuel and high-level radioactive waste; he stepped down from the Board in 2017.

https://profiles.stanford.edu/rodney-ewing

Co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation
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Lauren Davis Director, Energy Program 11th Hour Project
Michael Kieschnick President Moderator Green Advocacy Project
Film Screenings

Addressing highly polluting brick manufacturing in South Asia

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Abstract: Clay fired bricks are a primary building material used in the rapidly expanding construction sector across South Asia. These bricks are primarily manufactured by small enterprises using inefficient, highly polluting coal-fired kilns. The black carbon and the greenhouse gases emitted by brick kilns across South Asia is comparable to the global radiative forcing of the entire US passenger car fleet. The pollution generated by these brick kilns also affect human health. In Dhaka, Bangladesh brick kilns contribute 40% of the ambient particulate matter during winter and are estimated to result in 5000 adult deaths each year. In addition, the coercive collection of topsoil as part of clay mining undermines agricultural productivity in settings of high poverty and malnutrition.

This talk will discuss why bricks are manufactured in Bangladesh using an approach that is so damaging to the environment and to public health. It will explore combined technical, financial and political strategies to transform the sector.

Speaker bio:  Prof. Luby studied philosophy and earned a Bachelor of Arts summa cum laude from Creighton University. Prof. Luby earned his medical degree from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical School at Dallas and completed his residency in internal medicine at the University of Rochester-Strong Memorial Hospital. He studied epidemiology and preventive medicine at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prof. Luby's former positions include leading the Epidemiology Unit of the Community Health Sciences Department at the Aga Khan University in Karachi, Pakistan for 5 years and working as a Medical Epidemiologist in the Foodborne and Diarrheal Diseases Branch of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention exploring causes and prevention of diarrheal disease in settings where diarrhea is a leading cause of childhood death.  Immediately prior to his current appointment, Prof. Luby served for 8 years at the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Diseases Research, Bangladesh (icddr,b), where he directed the Centre for Communicable Diseases. Prof. Luby was seconded from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and was the Country Director for CDC in Bangladesh.

During his over 20 years of public health work in low income countries, Prof. Luby frequently encountered political and governance difficulties undermining efforts to improve public health. His work at FSI engages him with a community of scholars who provide ideas and approaches to understand and address these critical barriers.

Stephen Luby Professor of Medicine Stanford University
Seminars

Energy Production and the Environment in Canada Info Session

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Looking for a research opportunity this summer? Join us on an exciting adventure to use skills learned in the classroom to tackle a real-world problem: fossil fuel production and its effects on climate change. Come learn about the Energy Production and the Environment in Canada trip details at our info session. Lunch will be served.

Find out more on our website here.

 

International Policy Studies Kitchen, Ground Floor, Encina Hall (616 Serra St.)

Eyes in the sky, boots on the ground : assessing satellite- and ground-based approaches to crop yield measurement and analysis in Uganda

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Crop yields in smallholder systems are traditionally assessed using farmer-reported information in surveys, occasionally by crop cuts for a sub-section of a farmer's plot, and rarely using full-plot harvests. Accuracy and cost vary dramatically across methods. In parallel, satellite data is improving in terms of spatial, temporal, and spectral resolution needed to discern performance on smallholder plots. This study uses data from a survey experiment in Uganda, and evaluates the accuracy of Sentinel-2 imagery-based, remotely-sensed plot-level maize yields with respect to ground-based measures relying on farmer self-reporting, sub-plot crop cutting (CC), and full-plot crop cutting (FP). Remotely-sensed yields include two versions calibrated to FP and CC yields (calibrated), and an alternative based on crop model simulations, using no ground data (uncalibrated). On the ground, self-reported yields explained less than 1 percent of FP (and CC) yield variability, and while the average difference between CC and FP yields was not significant, CC yields captured one-quarter of FP yield variability. With satellite data, both calibrated and uncalibrated yields captured FP yield variability on pure stand plots similarly well, and both captured half of FP yield variability on pure stand plots above 0.10 hectare. The uncalibrated yields were consistently 1 ton per hectare higher than FP or CC yields, and the satellite-based yields were less well correlated with the ground-based measures on intercropped plots compared with pure stand ones. Importantly, regressions using CC, FP and remotely-sensed yields as dependent variables all produced very similar coefficients for yield response to production factors.

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Nation-State-izing Religion: Bureaucratic Islam in Southeast Asia

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Co-sponsored by the Southeast Asia Program and the Abbasi Program in Islamic Studies

Transnational Islam lacks the centralized leadership and institutions associated with Catholicism. Yet hierarchical and authoritative bodies do make decisions regarding Islam in various contemporary settings, including within the institutional frameworks of states. What happens when Muslim faith and practice are adapted to the terms and procedures of bureaucracy and the modern nation-state?

Dr. Müller will present an original conceptual framework for studying the bureaucratization of Islam. He will apply it to five Southeast Asian cases—Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore. State bureaucracies in these countries vary widely, but generally they aim to influence or control trends and meanings in local Islamic discourse. Drawing on current debates in the anthropology of the state, with particular reference to Brunei and Singapore, Müller will offer an original analytic framework to explain similarities and differences in bureaucratized Islam in Southeast Asia. Possible implications beyond the region will also be explored.

Dominik Müller

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heads the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology’s Research Group on the Bureaucratization of Islam and Its Socio-Legal Dimensions in Southeast Asia. He is also a non-resident fellow in the Centre for Asian Legal Studies at the National University of Singapore (NUS). Prior positions include visitorships at NUS (2016), the University of Oxford (2015), the University of Brunei Darussalam (2014), and Stanford University (APARC, 2013).  His doctorate in anthropology is from Goethe University Frankfurt (2012).His latest publication is an article on “Hybrid Pathways to Orthodoxy” in Brunei in the April-May 2018 Journal of Current Southeast Asian Affairs, a special issue on bureaucratized Islam that he also guest-edited.

 

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Dominik Müller

Shorenstein APARC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, Room C331
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 724-5656 (650) 723-6530
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Visiting Scholar
MullerDominik.jpg PhD

Dominik Müller joins the Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (Shorenstein APARC) from February until May 2013 from the Department of Anthropology at Goethe-University Frankfurt where he serves as a postdoctoral research associate.

His research interests encompass Islam and popular culture in contemporary Southeast Asia, Malaysian domestic politics, and socio-legal change in the Malay world.

During his time at the Shorenstein APARC, Müller will conduct research on the religious bureaucracy of Malaysia. His research project at Stanford is funded by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).

Müller obtained his PhD summa cum laude in 2012 in cultural anthropology from the Cluster of Excellence the “Formation of Normative Orders” at Frankfurt University. He previously studied anthropology, philosophy, and law in Frankfurt and at Leiden University. His dissertation on Islam, Politics, and Youth in Malaysia received the Frobenius Society’s Research Award 2012 and will be published in 2013.

Visiting Fellow, Islamic Legal Studies Program on Law and Social Change, Harvard University
Seminars

How did the Fukushima disaster affect air pollution?

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In March 2011, a post-earthquake tsunami triggered nuclear meltdowns, hydrogen-air explosions and the release of radioactive materials from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan. The Fukushima disaster has been called the most significant nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. Professor Rodney C. Ewing, Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security and co-director at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI), as a member of a team of Japanese researchers, today published a report on the details of what exactly — at the particle level — was released into the air after the disaster.

In the discussion that follows, Ewing explains the team’s findings and why they are important for health and environmental safety.

Why did you decide to study the Fukushima disaster?

The Fukishima Daiichi event surprised me. I now teach a freshman seminar on this event. I am particularly interested to understand why the accident occurred and what the long-term impact will be on the environment. This research paper reflects my interest in answering these questions.

We’ve heard lots about possible health effects from contaminated water after the Fukushima disaster, but less about particulates in the air. What did you find?

During the core melt-down events at Fukushima Daiichi, radioactivity was released as fine particulates that traveled in the air, sometime for distances of tens of kilometers, and settled onto the surrounding countryside.

In order to understand the health risk, it is very important to understand the form and chemistry of these particulates.

Recently, in a previous paper we have described a new type of particulate that is Cs-rich (some Cs isotopes are highly radioactive). The highly radioactive Cs-rich particles formed in the reactor by condensation from a silica-rich vapor, formed from the melting of core and concrete structures. In this paper, we describe the first identification of fragments of the melted core that were entrapped by the Cs-particles and transported away from the reactor site, some 4 kilometers. This is an important discovery because this provides us with samples of the fuel and melted core.

This is a special contribution because it uses very advanced electron microscopy techniques that allow for imaging of individual atoms or clusters of atoms. This advanced technique is required because the particles are so small — nanometers in size.

How did you come to work with your collaborators in Japan?

I have had long standing collaborations with Japanese scientists for decades. The lead researcher for the group, Professor Satoshi Utusunomiya, was once a member of my research group when I was at the University of Michigan. We have always collaborated on topics that involve radioactive materials and the use of electron microscopy. This collaboration is an entirely natural outgrowth of previous collaborations.

What, if any, policy recommendations would you suggest based on your findings?

The most direct result would be to design monitoring systems so that we have a good record of released particulates. Also, we need to push the development of advanced analytical techniques so that these particulates can be quickly identified and characterized.

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