Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: As a partial remedy to the reduction of First Amendment protections for religious action in Employment Division v. Smith (1990), Congress enacted the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) in 2000. Among other things, RLUIPA's core provisions require local zoning and historic preservation officials to exempt religious organizations from burdensome regulations unless doing so would threaten a compelling governmental interest.

To what extent has RLUIPA protected religious rights? Judging by litigation outcomes alone, the evidence looks bleak; indeed, in the reported decisions to date, religious organizations have usually failed in court when pressing RLUIPA claims. Yet as this paper shows, RLUIPA has indeed fostered greater accommodation of religion in numerous instances around the country -- because its statutory remedies have increased the leverage of religious interests in bargaining outside of court. Simply put, critics of RLUIPA who decry its ineffectiveness as a judicial remedy may be missing the forest for the trees. In dozens of instances of church-state conflict from coast to coast, religious organizations have effectively used RLUIPA -- and its implicit threat of judicial remedy -- as an effective tool in gaining accommodations through negotiations. In those cases, no resort to courts and formal litigation ever became necessary.

Publication Type: Hands-on Sessions
Abstract: A Continuation of the Morning Session: This will teach basics about radiation, detection and the uses of nuclear science and technology in society. Teachers who complete the workshop will receive materials including hands-on activities and a Geiger counter. They will meet professionals in nuclear science.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Emergent communications technologies, as components, facilitators, or scapegoats of social change, have often been foci of cultural anxieties explicitly or implicitly related to changes in social structure and relations. This is apparent perhaps now more than ever, when industrialized cultures face a steadily increasing array of not only new communication technologies, but also their networking. From subversive bloggers and predatory MySpace-rs to iPod anomie and videogame addictions, technological anxieties suffuse not only news and popular media but can also influence the development and regulation of communication technologies, as well as related policy issues such as copyright, intellectual property, and obscenity. Therefore, multidisciplinary cultural studies of technological anxieties holds potential for not only providing clarity for policymakers and identification of actual threats, but also insight into the cultural anxieties and identities pertaining to changes in social structure.
This paper examines a case study in a particular type of technological anxiety–that of health risks perceived to be associated with electromagnetic radiation (EMR). In analyzing the discourse of online activists involved with this issue, my goal was to gain insight into how EMR activists constructs identities in relation to the technolog(ies) they deem threatening. How they see—and present--themselves in relation to the perceived technological threat? Who are they, or who do they feel they need to be to be to combat this threat? Drawing on discourse analysis, gender studies, and new media research, I will present evidence that these activists can be viewed as having two types of subject positions in relation to technology: social and individualistic, with the social orientation operating as the “public face” of EMR activist discourse. I will also argue that gendered subject positions also form a significant component of this discourse. Not only in that the activists’ online discourse can be viewed as explicitly gendered masculine or feminine, but that this gender dynamic also informs the social / individual subject positions. In the public and private division of the online communication networks of EMR activists, gender provides a perspective for seeing how a legitimizing hierarchy confines certain types of knowledge, rhetoric, action, and experience to less-visible realms.

Publication Type: Hands-on Sessions
Abstract: This will teach basics about radiation, detection and the uses of nuclear science and technology in society. Teachers who complete the workshop will receive materials including hands-on activities and a Geiger counter. They will meet professionals in nuclear science. (Must take with Session II to obtain the Geiger Counter)

Publication Type: Poster Presentation
Abstract: The near-ground light environment in woodland ecosystems varies with community architecture, unique patterns of species aggregation, and total canopy cover. The associated distribution of shade affects near-surface energy and water dynamics, and varies systematically with increasing gradients of canopy cover. In arid and semi-arid environments, where water loss through evaportranspiration > 90% of the precipitation, estimating evaporation as a function of canopy cover and light attenuation is critical for understanding water conservation in the heterogeneous near-surface soil microclimate. We established a gradient of research transects in piñyon-juniper woodlands on a mesa north of Flagstaff, Arizona that ranged in canopy cover from 5 to 65 percent, and calculated annual mean solar radiation for 1 meter above ground level. Preliminary results indicate a near-linear decrease in mean solar radiation with increasing coverage and a curvilinear variance with increasing cover that peaks at 45 percent cover, consistent with previous modeled estimates. Next we will calculate daily evaporation rates using micro-lysimeters, and compare results between cover gradients and between canopy and intercanopy areas. We anticipate that our results will have implications for soil evaporation rates in ecosystems under similar abiotic constraints and will be applicable to issues related to water budgets and associated conservation issues in southwest piñyon-juniper woodlands throughout their geographic range.