PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

UNH Research: New Hampshire coastal recreationists support offshore wind

2021-03-31
(Press-News.org) DURHAM, N.H.-- As the Biden administration announces a plan to expand the development of offshore wind energy development (OWD) along the East Coast, research from the University of New Hampshire shows significant support from an unlikely group, coastal recreation visitors. From boat enthusiasts to anglers, researchers found surprisingly widespread support with close to 77% of coastal recreation visitors supporting potential OWD along the N.H. Seacoast.

"This study takes a closer look at the lingering assumption that offshore wind in the United States might hurt coastal recreation and tourism when in fact, we found the opposite," said Michael Ferguson, assistant professor of recreation management and policy. "Our findings suggest that offshore wind energy development will likely have little impact on coastal recreation and tourism, and in some instances, may even help amplify visitation."

In the study, recently published in the journal Energy Research & Social Science, researchers collected data from N.H. coastal recreation visitors using on-site surveys at 18 different locations along the seacoast, including beaches, marinas, boat launches, angling locations and yacht clubs. They surveyed a variety of visitors from sightseeing and charter operators to beach goers, surfers and anglers assessing overall perceptions toward acceptance, support, fit, and recreation impact of OWD. The researchers found that when asked about OWD, 77% of coastal visitors were supportive, 73% were accepting and 58% agreed that OWD would fit the N.H. seascape.

To help coastal recreation visitors visualize what a commercial scale offshore wind farm would look like on the N.H. Seacoast, the researchers showed 50% of respondents a photo simulation of an OWD project while the other 50% of respondents did not view it. Findings indicated that it did not matter if respondents saw the photo simulation of not, their attitudes remained the same; largely positive and supportive. Additionally, most respondents agreed that OWD would not cause them to alter or substitute their recreation activities, behaviors, or experiences.

"Most of these coastal recreation visitors frequented the area, so these are people with strong ties to the N.H. Seacoast," said Ferguson. "And, since offshore wind energy development has had its hurdles gaining traction and acceptance in the United States, our findings suggest that coastal recreation visitors are open and supportive of it and policymakers, natural resource managers, and the OWD industry should recognize coastal recreation and tourism as critical stakeholder sectors."

The researchers cite in their paper that along the N.H. Seacoast, coastal recreation is an essential sector of the state economy, accounting for more than $1.5 billion in annual economic impact. Across the nation, beaches and their associated coastal recreation activities serve as a leading source of tourism revenue in states with coastlines.

INFORMATION:

This work was supported by New Hampshire Sea Grant.

The University of New Hampshire inspires innovation and transforms lives in our state, nation, and world. More than 16,000 students from all 50 states and 71 countries engage with an award-winning faculty in top-ranked programs in business, engineering, law, health and human services, liberal arts and the sciences across more than 200 programs of study. As one of the nation's highest-performing research universities, UNH partners with NASA, NOAA, NSF and NIH, and receives more than $110 million in competitive external funding every year to further explore and define the frontiers of land, sea and space.



ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

First images of freshwater plumes at sea

First images of freshwater plumes at sea
2021-03-31
The first imaging of substantial freshwater plumes west of Hawai'i Island may help water planners to optimize sustainable yields and aquifer storage calculations. University of Hawai'i at Mānoa researchers demonstrated a new method to detect freshwater plumes between the seafloor and ocean surface in a study recently published in Geophysical Research Letters. The research, supported by the Hawai'i EPSCoR 'Ike Wai project, is the first to demonstrate that surface-towed marine controlled-source electromagnetic (CSEM) imaging can be used to map oceanic freshwater plumes in high-resolution. It is an extension of the groundbreaking discovery of freshwater beneath the seafloor in 2020. Both are important findings in a world facing climate change, where ...

Researchers: Plants play leading role in cycling toxic mercury through the environment

2021-03-31
LOWELL, Mass. - Researchers studying mercury gas in the atmosphere with the aim of reducing the pollutant worldwide have determined a vast amount of the toxic element is absorbed by plants, leading it to deposit into soils. Hundreds of tons of mercury each year are emitted into the atmosphere as a gas by burning coal, mining and other industrial and natural processes. These emissions are absorbed by plants in a process similar to how they take up carbon dioxide. When the plants shed leaves or die, the mercury is transferred to soils where large amounts also make their way into watersheds, threatening wildlife and people who eat contaminated fish. Exposure to high levels of mercury over long ...

Study: Female monkeys use males as "hired guns" for defense against predators

Study: Female monkeys use males as hired guns for defense against predators
2021-03-31
BRAZZAVILLE, Republic of Congo (March 31, 2021) - Researchers with the Wildlife Conservation Society's (WCS) Congo Program and the Nouabalé-Ndoki Foundation found that female putty-nosed monkeys (Cercopithecus nictitans) use males as "hired guns" to defend from predators such as leopards. Publishing their results in the journal Royal Society Open Science, the team discovered that female monkeys use alarm calls to recruit males to defend them from predators. The researchers conducted the study among 19 different groups of wild putty-nosed monkeys, a type of forest guenon, in Mbeli Bai, a study area within the forests in Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park, Northern Republic of Congo. The results promote the idea that females' general alarm requires males to assess the nature ...

The IASLC Molecular Database Project: Objectives, challenges and opportunities

2021-03-31
(Denver, Colo., -- March 31, 2021)- A new Molecular Database Project initiated by the International Association for the Study of Lung (IASLC) will accelerate the understanding of lung cancer biology, clinical care and care delivery on a global scale and will improve the prognosis and optimal treatment of lung cancer across time and space, according to an editorial in the Journal of Thoracic Oncology, an official journal of the IASLC. The editorial can be viewed here: https://www.jto.org/article/S1556-0864(21)01781-0/fulltext. In the editorial, the IASLC Staging and Prognostic Factors Committee's Molecular Sub-Committee, and committee members, emphasized that there is great opportunity, with the emergence of molecular biomarkers of disease behavior, to improve ...

Getting to the core of HIV replication

Getting to the core of HIV replication
2021-03-31
Viruses lurk in the grey area between the living and the nonliving, according to scientists. Like living things, they replicate but they don't do it on their own. The HIV-1 virus, like all viruses, needs to hijack a host cell through infection in order to make copies of itself. Supercomputer simulations supported by the National Science Foundation-funded Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) have helped uncover the mechanism for how the HIV-1 virus imports into its core the nucleotides it needs to fuel DNA synthesis, a key step in its replication. It's the first example ...

Study shows promise of quantum computing using factory-made silicon chips

Study shows promise of quantum computing using factory-made silicon chips
2021-03-31
The qubit is the building block of quantum computing, analogous to the bit in classical computers. To perform error-free calculations, quantum computers of the future are likely to need at least millions of qubits. The latest study, published in the journal PRX Quantum, suggests that these computers could be made with industrial-grade silicon chips using existing manufacturing processes, instead of adopting new manufacturing processes or even newly discovered particles. For the study, researchers were able to isolate and measure the quantum state of a single electron (the qubit) in a silicon transistor manufactured using a 'CMOS' technology similar to that used to make chips in computer processors. Furthermore, the spin of the electron was found to remain stable for a period of up ...

Vitamin A for nerve cells

Vitamin A for nerve cells
2021-03-31
Neuroscientists agree that a person's brain is constantly changing, rewiring itself and adapting to environmental stimuli. This is how humans learn new things and create memories. This adaptability and malleability is called plasticity. "Physicians have long suspected that remodeling processes also take place in humans at the contact points between nerve cells, i.e. directly at the synapses. Until now, however, such a coordinated adaptation of structure and function could only be demonstrated in animal experiments," says Prof. Dr. Andreas Vlachos from the Institute of Anatomy and Cell Biology at the University of Freiburg. But now Vlachos, together with Prof. Dr. Jürgen Beck, head of the Department of Neurosurgery at the University Medical Center Freiburg, has provided experimental evidence ...

First X-rays from Uranus discovered

First X-rays from Uranus discovered
2021-03-31
Astronomers have detected X-rays from Uranus for the first time, using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. This result may help scientists learn more about this enigmatic ice giant planet in our solar system.   Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun and has two sets of rings around its equator. The planet, which has four times the diameter of Earth, rotates on its side, making it different from all other planets in the solar system. Since Voyager 2 was the only spacecraft to ever fly by Uranus, astronomers currently rely on telescopes much closer to Earth, like Chandra and the Hubble Space Telescope, to learn about this distant and cold planet that is made up almost entirely of hydrogen and helium.   In the new study, researchers used Chandra observations ...

Attention and working memory: Two sides of the same neural coin?

Attention and working memory: Two sides of the same neural coin?
2021-03-31
In 1890, psychologist William James described attention as the spotlight we shine not only on the world around us, but also on the contents of our minds. Most cognitive scientists since then have drawn a sharp distinction between what James termed "sensorial attention" and "intellectual attention," now usually called "attention" and "working memory," but James saw them as two varieties of the same mental process. New research by Princeton neuroscientists suggests that James was on to something, finding that attention to the outside world and attention to our own thoughts are actually two sides of the same neural coin. What's more, they have observed the coin as it flips inside the brain. A paper published in Nature on March 31 by END ...

Quantum material's subtle spin behavior proves theoretical predictions

Quantum materials subtle spin behavior proves theoretical predictions
2021-03-31
Using complementary computing calculations and neutron scattering techniques, researchers from the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge and Lawrence Berkeley national laboratories and the University of California, Berkeley, discovered the existence of an elusive type of spin dynamics in a quantum mechanical system. The team successfully simulated and measured how magnetic particles called spins can exhibit a type of motion known as Kardar-Parisi-Zhang, or KPZ, in solid materials at various temperatures. Until now, scientists had not found evidence of this particular phenomenon outside of soft matter ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

Discovering hidden wrinkles in spacecraft membrane with a single camera

Women are less likely to get a lung transplant than men and they spend six weeks longer on the waiting list

Study sheds more light on life expectancy after a dementia diagnosis

Tesco urged to drop an “unethical” in-store infant feeding advice service pilot

Unraveling the events leading to multiple sex chromosomes using an echidna genome sequence

New AI platform identifies which patients are likely to benefit most from a clinical trial

Unique Stanford Medicine-designed AI predicts cancer prognoses, responses to treatment

A new ultrathin conductor for nanoelectronics

Synthetic chemicals and chemical products require a new regulatory and legal approach to safeguard children’s health

The genes that grow a healthy brain could fuel adult glioblastoma

New MSU study explains the delayed rise of plants, animals on land

UTA becomes one of largest natural history libraries

Number of autistic individuals enrolled in Medicaid and receiving federal housing support increased by 70% from 2008-16

St. Jude scientists create scalable solution for analyzing single-cell data

What is the average wait time to see a neurologist?

Proximity effect: Method allows advanced materials to gain new property

LJI researchers shed light on devastating blood diseases

ISS National Lab announces up to $650,000 in funding for technology advancement in low Earth orbit

Scientists show how sleep deprived brain permits intrusive thoughts

UC Irvine-led team discovers potential new therapeutic targets for Huntington’s disease

Paul “Bear” Bryant Awards 2024 Coach of the Year finalists named

Countering the next phase of antivaccine activism

Overcoming spasticity to help paraplegics walk again

Tiny microbe colonies communicate to coordinate their behavior

Researchers develop new technology for sustainable rare earth mining

Words activate hidden brain processes shaping emotions, decisions, and behavior

Understanding survival disparities in cancer care: A population-based study on mobility patterns

Common sleep aid may leave behind a dirty brain

Plant cells gain immune capabilities when it’s time to fight disease

Study sheds light on depression in community-dwelling older adults

[Press-News.org] UNH Research: New Hampshire coastal recreationists support offshore wind