astronomy

Lara Cushing

Lara Cushing is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Lara Cushing rather than just read about it. In short: Lara J. Cushing is an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and holds the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the Fielding School of Public Health of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Key takeaways

Lara Cushing belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Lara Cushing to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Lara Cushing from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

Lara J. Cushing is an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and holds the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the Fielding School of Public Health of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Cushing studies exposures to environmental hazards and their relationship to social inequalities involving race and class. She also studies effects on pregnant women and infants. She addresses the health consequences of living near greenspace, urban heat islands, hazardous materials sites, oil and gas drilling sites and exposure to dangerous chemicals in the air and water. She examines the disparate impacts of global climate change, sea level rise and other issues involving environmental justice.

Career Cushing has a B.S. in molecular environmental biology, an M.P.H. in epidemiology (2011), and a PhD in energy & resources (2015) from the University of California, Berkeley. From 2016-2020 Cushing was an assistant professor in the Department of Health Education at San Francisco State University. In addition she was a visiting scholar in the Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management at the University of California, Los Angeles. As of October 2021, she became an assistant professor of environmental health sciences and the Jonathan and Karin Fielding Presidential Chair in Health Equity at the UCLA Fielding School of Public Health.

Research Cushing received an EPA STAR Graduate Fellowship (2012–2015) in support of her Ph.D. work, to examine health impacts of climate change and their relationship to race, ethnicity and class in Texas, from an environmental justice perspective. In addition she was a 2014 Environmental Fellow of the Robert & Patricia Switzer Foundation, and a 2018 JPB Environmental Health Fellow of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Cushing was a contributing author to the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (2007) and IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (2014) of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). She is interested in analytical methods for epidemiological studies and in developing regulatory frameworks to reduce environmental health disparities. She helped to develop a statewide environmental justice screening tool for use in California: the California Communities Environmental Health Screening Tool or CalEnviroScreen proposed as part of California Senate Bill 535 (2012). In 2018, Cushing and others published the results of studying California's cap-and-trade program. Evidence from the carbon-trading program between 2011 and 2015 supported concerns that companies would keep emitting. Half of the facilities involved actually increased in-state emissions during the period observed. Facilities in disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to increase emissions. In 2020, Cushing and Jill E. Johnston reported on the potential health impacts on pregnant women of flaring in the Eagle Ford Shale of Texas. Their results showed that women who lived closer to the flares had a 30-50% higher risk of premature birth and lower birth weight than women who did not live near oil and gas wells. In addition, self-identified Latina or Hispanic women were exposed to more flaring and were at higher risk of preterm birth.

Selected publications Cushing, Lara J; Chau, Khang; Franklin, Meredith; Johnston, Jill E (1 March 2021). "Up in smoke: characterizing the population exposed to flaring from unconventional oil and gas development in the contiguous US". Environmental Research Letters. 16 (3): 034032. Bibcode:2021ERL....16c4032C. doi:10.1088/1748-9326/abd3d4. ISSN 1748-9326. S2CID 232225505. Cushing, Lara; Blaustein-Rejto, Dan; Wander, Madeline; Pastor, Manuel; Sadd, James; Zhu, Allen; Morello-Frosch, Rachel (10 July 2018). "Carbon trading, co-pollutants, and environmental equity: Evidence from California's cap-and-trade program (2011–2015)". PLOS Medicine. 15 (7) e1002604. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1002604. ISSN 1549-1676. PMC 6038989. PMID 29990353. Cushing, Lara; Morello-Frosch, Rachel; Wander, Madeline; Pastor, Manuel (18 March 2015). "The Haves, the Have-Nots, and the Health of Everyone: The Relationship Between Social Inequality and Environmental Quality". Annual Review of Public Health. 36 (1): 193–209. doi:10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031914-122646. ISSN 0163-7525. PMID 25785890. Cushing, Lara; Faust, John; August, Laura Meehan; Cendak, Rose; Wieland, Walker; Alexeeff, George (1 November 2015). "Racial/Ethnic Disparities in Cumulative Environmental Health Impacts in California: Evidence From a Statewide Environmental Justice Screening Tool (CalEnviroScreen 1.1)". American Journal of Public Health. 105 (11): 2341–2348. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2015.302643. ISSN 0090-0036. PMC 4605180. PMID 26378826.

Notes

References

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Lara Cushing

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Lara Cushing claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Lara Cushing before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Lara Cushing ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Lara Cushing

In research: Lara Cushing appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Lara Cushing in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Lara Cushing is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics American epidemiologists, Living people, Public health researchers, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Lara Cushing outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Lara Cushing in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Lara Cushing means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Lara Cushing out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Lara Cushing in simple terms?

Why does Lara Cushing matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Lara Cushing?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Lara Cushing.