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The massive blackout that occurred in August 2003 left over 50 million people in the northeastern and midwestern parts of the United States without electricity and caused billions of dollars in economic losses. This event highlighted the importance of sustainable and resilient energy infrastructure. Our study examines the impact of this blackout on the sustainability of financial markets by analyzing the liquidity and information asymmetry of U.S. stocks listed on major exchanges. Our results show that the blackout had a negative impact on the financial market's liquidity, as evidenced by a significant widening of bid–ask spreads and a decrease in the market quality index. We also find an increase in information asymmetry during the blackout period, as measured by higher realized spreads. Furthermore, our study reveals that the blackout had a border impact on global financial markets and the negative effect on liquidity persisted even after two weeks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Government mandated blackouts precipitated a crisis in the optical consciousness of the American public in the first years of the Second World War. In an effort to foil potential aerial bombardment, citizens were asked to turn off their lights and so break an otherwise unqualified promise of modernization: ubiquitous illumination. After decades of constantly increasing levels of artificial light, blackouts challenged not only nighttime visibility, but spatial perception more generally. Americans discussed ways to adjust to dimmer surroundings, to infer spatial information from non-visual senses and familiarize themselves with nightscapes based on specular rather than geometric properties of surfaces. Although the blackouts lasted only a few years in the USA, they reveal the profile, albeit in negative terms, of how the nation's visual environment was imagined around 1940. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On August 14, 2003, the U.S. faced the largest blackout in history, which left over 50 million people without electricity in eight U.S. states and part of Canada. This paper investigates the effects of the blackout on the security values of the U.S. electric utilities and manufacturing firms in the electric power equipment industry, using an event study method. The results of this empirical study show that the electric utilities were negatively affected, but the electrical equipment manufacturing firms were significantly, positively affected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On Thursday, August 14, 2003, at about 4:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time in the USA, an electrical blackout crippled seven northeastern states in the USA (e.g., Michigan, Ohio. Pennsylvania, New York) and parts of southeastern Canada (e.g., Toronto, Montreal, Ottawa). In some areas, the blackout lasted four days (until Monday, August 18, 2003) before power was fully restored and back to normal. The blackout affected about 50 million people, contributed to about live deaths, resulted in at least $6 billion in economic losses, and will require about $50 billion over the long run to fix the electrical grid system in the USA. This article discusses many facets of the blackout: causes; immediate impacts on industries and consumers; cost to industry; previous blackouts in the USA; rolling blackouts in other parts of the world (e.g., India, Liberia, Iraq, Haiti); impacts on travel and tourism in the USA; government responses: and managerial implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction and Aims: COVID-19, considered a pandemic by the World Health Organization, overwhelmed hospitals in the USA. In parallel to the growing pandemic, alcohol sales grew in the USA, with people stockpiling alcohol. Alcohol-induced blackouts are one particularly concerning consequence of heavy drinking, and the extent to which blackout prevalence may change in the context of a pandemic is unknown. The purpose of the current study is to describe the prevalence of publicly available tweets in the USA referencing alcohol-induced blackouts prior to and during the COVID-19 outbreak., Design and Methods: We used Crimson Hexagon's ForSight tool to access all original English tweets written in the USA that referenced alcohol-related blackouts in 2019 and 2020. Using infoveillance methods, we tracked changes in the number and proportion of tweets about blackouts., Results: More alcohol-related blackout tweets were written between 13 March and 24 April in 2020 than 2019. In addition, a greater proportion of all tweets referenced blackouts in 2020 than in 2019. In the period prior to the 'stay at home' orders (January to mid-March), the proportion of blackout tweets were higher in 2020 than 2019., Discussion and Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that references to high-risk drinking persist during the pandemic despite restrictions on large social gatherings. Given that the internet is a common source of information for COVID-19, the frequent posting about blackouts during this period might normalise the behaviour. This is concerning because alcohol use increases susceptibility to COVID-19, and alcohol-related mortality can further tax hospital resources., (© 2020 Australasian Professional Society on Alcohol and other Drugs.)

Background: Blackouts-or periods of alcohol-induced amnesia for all or part of a drinking event-have been identified as independent predictors of alcohol-related harm that may be used to identify individuals who would benefit from intervention. However, little is known about the prevalence and impact of blackouts among Veterans. This study examined blackouts as a moderator of young adult veteran response to a brief, online personalized normative feedback (PNF) intervention for heavy drinking., Methods: Veterans scoring ≥3/4 (women/men) on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test completed a baseline and 1-month assessment as part of a larger intervention trial (N = 571; 83% male; age M = 28.9, SD = 3.3). Participants were randomized to alcohol PNF (n = 285) or a video game attention control (n = 286). Hierarchical regression was used to examine the interaction between intervention condition and blackouts on alcohol-related outcomes at 1-month follow-up., Results: At baseline, 26% of participants reported loss of memory for drinking events in the past 30 days. The interaction between condition and blackouts was significant, such that PNF participants who had experienced blackouts at baseline reported greater decreases in drinking quantity at 1 month than those who had not, and only PNF participants who had experienced baseline blackouts reported a decrease in alcohol problems at follow-up., Conclusions: PNF appears to be particularly effective for individuals who have experienced alcohol-induced blackout, perhaps because blackouts prime them for feedback on their alcohol use. While other negative consequences may also prime individuals for behavior change, blackouts are posited as a particularly useful screening tool because they are prevalent among young adults, have a strong association with alcohol-related harm, and are assessed in widely used clinical measures., (Copyright © 2018 by the Research Society on Alcoholism.)

Background: Consequences of heavy drinking include alcohol-induced blackouts, which are periods of amnesia for all or part of a drinking event. One risk factor for blackouts is family history of problematic alcohol use (FH+); however, research rarely distinguishes maternal from paternal FH+. The objective of this study was to examine whether maternal or paternal FH+ better predicts likelihood of experiencing blackouts than a general measure of overall FH+, and whether gender moderates this association., Method: Participants (N=1164; 65.4% are female) were first-time college freshmen (age range=17-19) who participated in a 6-year, 10-assessment, longitudinal study in the United States. Alcohol-induced blackouts, the dependent measure, were dichotomized (yes/no) based on endorsement of memory problems after drinking using a single item during Years 4-6. FH+, captured at baseline, was coded if participants self-reported that their mother, father, or any of their four grandparents were a possible or definite problem drinker., Results: Overall, 773 (66.4%) participants reported experiencing blackouts during Years 4-6. Women were more likely to report blackouts than men; however, compared with women with a maternal FH+, men with a maternal FH+ were more than twice as likely to report blackouts., Discussion: Men appear to be more susceptible than women to the effects of a maternal FH+. Genetic and environmental explanations for this finding are discussed. In sum, these findings are an important step toward understanding a significant yet understudied negative consequence of heavy alcohol use., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)