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Federal funding awarded to the California Highway Patrol will help implement safety measures to reduce dangerous driving behaviors statewide.
The $2.5 million Speed Prevention, Education and Enforcement Deterrence, or SPEED II, grant aims to reduce the number of fatal and injury crashes related to speed and the number of victims killed and injured in these crashes.
To achieve this, the CHP will deploy enhanced enforcement and public awareness campaigns statewide.
Speeding and aggressive driving behaviors are a significant danger to the motoring public, pedestrians, and individuals using alternate forms of transportation.
In federal fiscal year 2021-2022, speed was a factor in nearly 40% of all fatal and injury crashes in California.
During this period, there were in excess of 28,000 speed-related crashes, resulting in over 400 deaths and more than 42,000 injuries.
“The receipt of this grant will enable the CHP to reinforce our commitment to road safety,” said CHP Commissioner Sean Duryee. “Through a combination of proactive enforcement and community education, we aim to eliminate the threat of speed and aggressive driving, while making our roads safer for everyone.”
During April 2021 to July 2023, the CHP used federal funding to employ educational and enforcement efforts to combat dangerous driving behaviors.
The federal funding allowed the CHP to conduct enhanced speed enforcement operations on state routes with increasingly speed related incidents.
During this period, the CHP issued over 48,000 citations to motorists exceeding 100 miles per hour; collaborated with allied law enforcement agencies and posted anti-speeding and aggressive driving behavior ads on social media.
Funding for this program was provided by a grant from the California Office of Traffic Safety, through the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
The share of low-income U.S. families experiencing food insufficiency – sometimes or often not having enough food to eat – fell from 24.5% to 22.5% at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, we found in a new study published in the November 2023 issue of Food Policy.
This 2 percentage-point decline coincided with the rapid expansion of a pilot program that allows the purchase of groceries online with benefits from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP.
First mandated by the farm bill Congress passed in 2014, the SNAP Online Purchasing Pilot was initially rolled out on a limited basis in 2019.
Once COVID-19 arrived in the U.S. in early 2020, the pilot was rapidly expanded nationwide because the pandemic disrupted schooling, child care, transportation and in-person retail shopping. All of those changes curtailed access to food – especially for people with low incomes.
Nationally, SNAP online grocery purchases soared to US$155 million in June 2020, from less than $3 million in January of that year.
To investigate whether the rapid rollout of the Online Purchasing Pilot played a role in the food insufficiency decline at that time, we teamed up with Jordan Jones, a U.S. Department of Agriculture economist. We analyzed 12 weeks of data covering April 23, 2020, to July 21, 2020, from the Household Pulse Survey involving aproximately 10,000 low-income households.
Because the pilot was rolled out gradually in different states, we were able to leverage the differences in the timing using a two-way fixed-effects model. This method made it possible to determine that SNAP’s online purchasing program contributed to the decline in food insufficiency.
The prevalence of very low food security – a condition in which people may skip meals – increased for families with children in 2020. But the impact of the Online Purchasing Pilot was not larger for these households as opposed to those without any kids.
We believe this suggests that the ability to use SNAP benefits online does not resolve some food-related problems, such as those that arise because of school closures.
Low-income children are eligible for free meals at school. While many school districts found creative ways to distribute grab-and-go meals when school buildings were closed in 2020 and 2021, not all families were able to take advantage of those opportunities.
Why it matters
SNAP benefits currently help more than 42 million Americans buy food. The maximum monthly amount for a family of four in the 2024 fiscal year, which began on Oct. 1, 2023, is $973 in the 48 mainland states and the District of Columbia.
Online options for using these benefits vary by state. In many locations, they include big stores that sell groceries, such as Walmart, Target, Whole Foods and Safeway, and some popular online retailers like Amazon.
Buying groceries online makes life easier for anyone who has trouble purchasing food in person, including people with disabilities, those with limited transportation access or those living in remote locations.
About 1 in 6 Americans pay for groceries online every week, and more than half have done so in the past 12 months.
What other research is being done in this field
This is one of several studies that have evaluated the impact of temporary food assistance policies at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. One member of our group, Grace Melo, conducted research with a different team that found that the mental health of children in low-income families that got a boost in SNAP benefits did not decline, even though they were disproportionately affected by the pandemic.
What’s next
Another member of our research team, Kyle Jones, is now researching how this pilot affects what kinds of groceries Americans are buying with SNAP benefits. He also plans to analyze how using the benefits for online purchases changes how much time people with these benefits spend on grocery shopping.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Grace Melo, Assistant professor of Agricultural Economics, Texas A&M University; Andrea Leschewski, Associate Professor of Applied Economics, South Dakota State University, and Kyle Jones, PhD Candidate in Economics, University of Kentucky
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The event will take place from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 11, at Konocti Vista Casino.
Doors open at 10 a.m.
During the ceremony there will be speakers, including Angela Carter, a longtime Lake County attorney who is involved with the Veterans Court.
There also will be music, presentations, awards, and a complimentary lunch and beverages following the ceremony.
Konocti Vista Casino is located at 2755 Mission Rancheria Road, Lakeport.
The data cover 2,299 positions and a total of more than $41.8 million in 2022 wages.
The newly published data include 1,593 positions at 20 fairs and expositions, and 706 positions at 32 First 5 commissions.
The Lake County Fair has 45 employees — most of them seasonal — with total wages reported at $244,156 and retirement and health contributions totaling $81,377.
Lake County’s First 5 Commission has 12 employees listed, only two of which — the executive director and health program support specialist — are paid, with total payroll at $105,035 and retirement and health contribution at $11,169.
California law requires cities, counties, and special districts to annually report compensation data to the State Controller.
Controller Cohen also maintains and publishes state government and California State University salary data.
No statutory requirement exists for superior courts, UC, community college districts, fairs, expositions, First 5 commissions, or K-12 education providers; their reporting is voluntary.
A list of entities that did not file or filed incomplete reports is available here.
The site contains pay and benefit information on more than two million government jobs in California, as reported annually by each entity.
As the chief fiscal officer of California, Controller Cohen is responsible for accountability and disbursement of the state’s financial resources.
The controller has independent auditing authority over government agencies that spend state funds. She is a member of numerous financing authorities, and fiscal and financial oversight entities including the Franchise Tax Board. She also serves on the boards for the nation’s two largest public pension funds.
A bad night of sleep was associated with a 15% greater risk of having an A-Fib episode, and continued poor sleep was associated with longer episodes of A-Fib.
The researchers noted that it is important to treat underlying disease that may be causing A-Fib, which is the most common type of arrythmia – when the heart beats too fast or too slow or irregularly.
The new study shows that strategies to improve general sleep quality also may help.
“Treating insomnia can be challenging, but in many cases, there are things within an individual’s control that can meaningfully improve sleep quality,” said corresponding author Gregory M. Marcus, MD, MAS, a cardiologist and electrophysiologist at UCSF Health.
He suggested going to bed at a reasonable and at a consistent time, avoiding alcohol and caffeine before bedtime, using the bed only for sleep or romance, exercising regularly, keeping the room cool, avoiding naps and waking up at the same time each day.
Sleep quality: the good, the bad and the horrible
UCSF has long been a leader in cardiology treatment, including for heart rhythm disorders. Although the risks associated with A-Fib have been extensively investigated, this is the first time that researchers have seen an immediate connection to poor sleep.
The study tracked 419 patients in the I-STOP-AFIB trial. They rated their sleep quality each night, as either “amazing,” “good,” “average,” “bad” or “horrible,” and used mobile electrocardiograms to measure A-Fib episodes the following day.
The study appears in JACC: Clinical Electrophysiology.
Climate change poses the biggest risks to the most vulnerable people, and the same is true for businesses: Highly leveraged companies – those that have accumulated too much debt – are uniquely susceptible to climate shocks. That’s what we found in a forthcoming study in The Review of Corporate Finance that analyzed data from more than 2,500 U.S. publicly listed companies over 16 years.
As professors who study climate finance and corporate governance, we wanted to understand how climate change affects businesses, and how stakeholders – people who have a stake in a firm’s success, such as consumers, employees and investors – respond to it.
So we and our colleagues Sadok El Ghoul at the University of Alberta and Omrane Guedhami at the University of South Carolina conducted a study to examine how climate risk affects indebted companies.
We found that climate change delivers a one-two punch to highly leveraged firms by intensifying the costs that stakeholders impose on them.
Consider consumers. Researchers know that climate change can push people to mix up their purchasing patterns – by buying greener products, for example, or by engaging in boycotts. And while evolving consumer preferences pose a challenge to all businesses, it’s harder for a company that’s deep in debt to adapt.
Our study suggested as much. Two years after facing intense climate change exposure, highly indebted firms saw sales growth fall by about 1.4% on average, we found. In monetary terms, that translates into an average US$59.7 million loss per company.
Climate change also worries investors, we found. Companies exposed to climate risk face the threat of financial and operational disruptions that may drain lenders’ funds, particularly for firms already burdened with high debt. By examining capital issuance within our sample of companies, we found that climate exposure reduced firms’ net debt issuance – meaning new debt minus retired debt – by around $457 million per firm on average. This is an additional hurdle for indebted businesses trying to raise money.
Why it matters
Researchers have long known that indebted companies are at greater risk of product failures and losing market share when economic conditions go south. Having too much debt can even force companies out of business, as some analysts contend happened with Toys R Us.
Our research suggests that climate change, which the World Economic Forum predicts will endanger about 2% of global financial assets by 2100, will push already shaky companies to the brink. It underscores the immense and asymmetric effects global warming will have on businesses – and the reality that the most vulnerable firms are set to endure the worst.
What’s next
Our study highlights the disproportionate impacts of climate change on financially fragile businesses. Moving forward, we plan to explore the influence of climate change on firms’ business behaviors, particularly in terms of their ethical conduct.
Regarding climate solutions, one of us (Huan Kuang) has shown how companies can use innovation to reduce their climate vulnerabilities. In a working paper co-authored with Bing Liang of the University of Massachusetts Amherst, every 1% increase in climate-related innovation – as measured by patent data – was found to reduce firm-level carbon emissions growth by around 100,000 metric tons.
However, indebted firms may not rush to invest in new technologies without some prodding. That means policy incentives will be key to success, and further research is needed to determine what they should look like.
Climate change could also have more complicated economic effects than many people realize. For example, if it forces companies that aren’t viable out of business, that would be a good thing for the economy – at least in theory, as one of us (Ying Zheng) explored in a recent paper on a related subject.
Many questions remain unanswered, but it’s already clear that climate change will have important and multifaceted effects on the future of business. We encourage other researchers to investigate further.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Huan Kuang, Assistant Professor of Finance, Bryant University and Ying (Cathy) Zheng, Associate Professor of Finance, Bryant University
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.