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Phonetic Reduction in Regional Variants of Kazakh: A Study of ‘zh’ Omission and Postverbal Affixation Across Regions
Get PDFThis study examines regional variation in the Kazakh language, specifically the phonetic reduction of the auxiliary verb “zhatyr” [ʒɑtɯr] in progressive constructions. While some people may assume minimal regional differences, this research questions that idea by studying how people in different parts of Kazakhstan pronounce and perceive “zhatyr.”
The findings indicate that “zhatyr” reduction varies by region, though speaker perceptions of regional variation do not always align with actual linguistic data. The study explores sociolinguistic factors, specifically geographical location, age, and gender, that may influence phonetic reduction.
As one of the first studies to investigate this phenomenon in modern Kazakh, this research contributes to our understanding of grammaticalization, phonetic variation, and regional linguistic diversity.</p
Radical True Crime: The Formation of Entertainment as Resistance
Get PDFTrue crime has long functioned as a cultural site where ideas of justice, criminality, and state authority are constructed and reinforced. While the genre has historically legitimized carceral logics and settler-colonial authority, its conventions have alsobeen subject to subversive reinterpretations. This dissertation defines and theorizes Radical True Crime as a distinct counter-hegemonic media practice that rejects traditional true crime’s reliance on spectacle and state legitimacy. Rather than reinforcing dominant crime narratives, Radical True Crime reclaims investigative storytelling to expose systemic violence, center marginalized perspectives, and propose alternative frameworks of justice. Tracing the historical development of true crime, this study demonstrates how the genre has evolved in response to shifting sociopolitical landscapes, from early crime journalism and radio docudramas to the rise of injustice narratives and contemporary streaming media.Radical True Crime builds upon past interventions, such as injustice documentaries and activist investigations, but diverges in its refusal to seek redress through the existing legal system. Instead, Radical True Crime interrogates the ideologicalfunction of criminalization itself, revealing how crime is constructed through state violence, media narratives, and historical erasure.
Through an analysis of key case studies this dissertation examines how Radical True Crime employs aesthetic and narrative strategies that challenge traditional crime storytelling. This dissertation contributes to media studies, abolitionist scholarship, and decolonial media theory by offering a new framework for understanding true crime as a site of resistance. As true crime continues to evolve, the emergence of Radical True Crime presents critical opportunities for reimagining justice, rejecting carceral narratives, and producing media that actively resists state violence. By centering the voices of those historically excluded from the construction of criminality and justice, Radical True Crime transforms the genre into a tool for liberation.</p
Semiotics of Online “Alt-Right” Discourse
Get PDFThe “alt-right” is a white supremacist movement which drew notoriety during the 2016 United States presidential election. Interacting primarily online, the alt-right is an ill-defined mixture of conservatives, neo-Nazis, Christian nationalists, antifeminists, and other reactionary political bodies. The hallmark of the alt-right, compared to other white supremacist movements, is its adaptation of white power politics to internet memes: images, discourses, and behaviors which circulate across social media platforms. This dissertation analyzes the semiotic practices of the alt-right, considering the many ways in which the movement plays with language, language ideologies, and public perception as it radicalizes young white men.
A distinct quality of the alt-right is its metapragmatic flexibility: alt-righters frequently discuss how to present themselves most effectively to outsiders (and how to manipulate public perception of the movement) through language and self-styling. Counter to mainstream stereotypes of the humorless, unintelligent racist (Billig 2005), the alt-right obscures its sincere ideological commitment to white supremacy through humor and plausible deniability. The concept of indexical misrecognition (Barrett & Hall 2024) is used to explore how alt-righters manage and deploy their knowledge of numerous semiotic repertoires to manipulate the public and draw adherents. The dissertation also considers the alt-right in relation to “mainstream” political polarization and challenges the efficacy of current political discourse to properly account for (let alone challenge) the rise of the far-right in the US and abroad.</p
Print-Based Manufacturing of Structures and Electronics for Challenging Environments
Get PDFBy taking advantage of the benefits inherent to Additive Manufacturing (AM), Print-based Manufacturing has proven itself to be a valuable resource with a variety of applications. Unlike Subtractive Manufacturing, AM allows structures and devices to be built up layer by layer. This enables an increase in the complexity of internal structures to be coupled with a potential reduction in the amount of time and materials needed for prototyping and manufacturing. There are currently two areas that would benefit highly from both of these qualities: Off-World Manufacturing, and Manufacturing Low-Cost Sensors for Soil Sensing.
At the beginning of this work, we show that AM can address one of the main challenges that Off-World Manufacturing faces: the lack of infrastructure that is inherent to being “off-world”. Combining AM with printable inks made from in situ materials has already been brought up as a viable method for building the infrastructure needed to colonize other planets. Unfortunately, we are unable to thoroughly test the printing of large structures in an environment comparable to the planets we are currently eyeing. By printing desirable structures, like bridges and walls, in simulated low gravity regimes and analyzing the effects on the resulting structures, we were able to find that bridging structures experience less “drooping” and wall structures experience less slumping.
Here, we define drooping as the sagging of an unsupported bridge or overhang. A reduction of drooping in bridges implies bridging structures could be printed with less support material. Similarly, we define slumping as a decrease in wall height that results from layer height compression. A reduction here implies walls printed in low gravity could be printed with fewer layers. In both cases, it is possible to save time and material when manufacturing these structures, which makes AM further desirable for this application.
When it comes to manufacturing low-cost sensors for soil monitoring, we show that the benefits of AM are twofold. Because soil properties like moisture, oxygen flux, and pH can be heterogeneous for areas above a square meter, dense sensor networks are very desirable. By using AM to print low-cost sensors and combining them with sensor housings made from low-cost, off-the-shelf materials, it is possible to decrease the cost of the sensors. This serves as the first major benefit to this area because it could allow for the deployment of dense sensor networks. Using soil oxygen content as the property in question, we show that housing can be used to safely deploy atmospheric oxygen sensors in soil. We also discuss and show that several types of printed oxygen sensors have been detailed in the literature. By combining these two areas, it is possible to develop soil oxygen sensors that are desirable.
The second major benefit that AM brings is that it enables the use of novel materials to prototype and manufacture sensors. We apply this to the development of printed sensors for soil microbial activity sensing. Currently, the options available to perform in situ measurements of soil microbial activity are very limited. By developing printable inks that combine conductive particles (CPs) or conductive polymers with biodegradable materials, we were able to develop printed sensors that transmute decomposition activities in soil into a signal that can be measured and transmitted using low-cost electronics. This significantly improves our ability to study and record soil properties, and it opens the door to the development of more soil sensors that can be manufactured by simply switching out the ink.</p
Precision Measurement of the Branching Fraction of ψ(2s)→μ+ μ-
Get PDFThis thesis presents a precision measurement of the branching fraction (ℬ) of the decay (2) → µ+µ−, using the BParking dataset collected during 2018 datataking period by the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider. The measurement is conducted relative to the well-known branching fractions of the decays / → µ+µ− and (2) → +− /, / → µ+µ−. The resulting branching fractions are determined to be (7.80 ± 0.33) × 10−3 and (8.00 ± 0.41) × 10−3 relative to these decay channels, respectively.
This analysis relies on three decay channels: ± → ± / → µ+µ−, ± → ± (2) → µ+µ−, and ± → ± (2), (2) → +−/, / → µ+µ−. Monte Carlo (MC) simulations are employed to compute the detection efficiencies, using dedicated private datasets for each channel. Contributions from misidentified pions are evaluated through specialized MC samples. The mass distributions of these events are modeled to quantify their impact on the measured signal. The resulting ℬ((2) → µ+µ−), relative to each decay channel, is found to be consistent with the current world-average value, offering a refined measurement with reduced uncertainties.</p
Transitional Justice Ritualism and Gender in Nepal
Get PDFAlmost 18 years after Nepal’s decade-long civil war, conflict victims are still awaiting justice, reparations, truth, and acknowledgement. This dissertation pushes the boundaries of transitional justice research by using a multi-sited critical ethnography to examine gender and how it operates and manifests in Nepal’s transitional justice process. I apply theoretical frameworks from Collective Memory to the practice and growing study of Transitional Justice through a gendered lens to better understand how a transitional justice process can operate as a site of official state memory construction that reinforces existing inequalities in society. The research findings provide a deeper exploration and critical analysis into two separate yet interrelated processes that have both perpetuated and maintained gendered silences in Nepal’s transitional justice process: 1.) transitional justice ritualism vis-à-vis the country’s truth commissions; and 2.) the silencing of conflict-related sexual violence. In Nepal, I find that the State uses transitional justice ritualism and silencing of conflict-related sexual violence as mechanisms for the hegemonic production of truth and memory. But, unlike other transitional justice processes around the world, Nepal’s process is not a project of collective remembering, but of collective forgetting. In this dissertation, I unpack the various and strategic layers of silencing around conflict-related sexual violence by both the state and individual women in Nepal, and I reveal creative collective countermemories that are challenging the official state narrative. The case of Nepal’s ongoing process raises broader considerations for transitional justice such as the role that international standardization may play in fostering state ritualism and deference to creating hollow institutions over meeting the needs and acknowledgement of local victims.</p
GEO-NSCG 2021 5-Year Estimates
No full textThis dataset is derived from the 2021 National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG), with imputed geographic data to provide a more detailed spatial context. It includes the foreign-born sample, with probability-based location assignments and imputed Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), offering geographically disaggregated data on foreign education experience, and valuable insights into the spatial distribution of highly skilled immigrants in the United States.
The dataset is used to explore the regional settlement patterns and socioeconomic outcomes of foreign-born STEM workers, enabling more granular analysis of migration and regional development.</p
Three Essays on Environmental Economics
Get PDF(1) Chapter 1- Due to the positive externalities of public transit, fares have been heavily subsidized around the world. Policymakers have designed these subsidies as a potential mechanism to reduce local air pollution. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of free-fare public transit subsidies in reducing air pollution. Studying the “Zero Fare for Better Air” initiative, I find no significant decrease in ground-level ozone due to free-fare public transit in Colorado. This paper also demonstrates how the free-fare initiative failed to improve welfare even when incorporating all the positive externalities of transit ridership.
(2) Chapter 2- As the realized experiences of wildfires threatening communities increase, the importance of proactive evacuation preparation and wildfire risk mitigation on private property to reduce the loss of lives and property is shaping wildfire policy and programs. To date, research has focused on pre-wildfire evacuation preparation and risk mitigation independently despite wildfire education programs promoting the need for residents to simultaneously prepare for evacuation while also mitigating wildfire risk on their properties. In this paper, we examine the substitutability or complementarity of these proactive risk-reducing actions. If mitigation and evacuation preparedness are substitutes, wildfire education programs may take a life-over-property approach and prioritize evacuation preparation over mitigation. However, if proactive risk-reducing efforts are complements, wildfire education programs can confidently encourage residents to prepare for evacuation while also mitigating wildfire risk on their properties. This complementarity may also demonstrate that poorly mitigated households are less prepared to evacuate, compounding their risks. Using survey data from households in 25 diverse wildland-urban interface (WUI) communities across five Western states, we explore how wildfire risk mitigation actions affect evacuation preparedness. We find that improving household wildfire mitigation is associated with an improvement in wildfire evacuation preparedness. This result provides evidence of a complementary relationship between wildfire mitigation and evacuation preparedness actions and highlights the potential benefits of a wildfire education approach that encourages residents to simultaneously prepare for evacuation and reduce wildfire risk on their properties before they are threatened by a wildfire.
(3) Chapter 3- Expanding the coverage of cap-and-trade systems is essential for improving global environmental outcomes and can lower the economic costs of achieving climate goals. However, linking cap-and-trade systems to new sectors presents various challenges for policymakers. This paper develops a theoretical model to study the linkage of existing markets to new sectors using two policy instruments: new emissions permit allocations and trading ratios. I show that first-best outcomes can be achieved by (i) setting trading ratios equal to the ratio of benefits from abatement between sectors and (ii) setting new permit allocations based on the efficiency of the existing cap. Importantly, regulators cannot achieve first-best solutions if there are constraints on either of these policy instruments. Leveraging my theoretical model, I simulate the decision of the European Union to link their Emissions Trading System to the aviation sector. Using estimates from the EU, this paper quantifies welfare from the initial linkage and demonstrates that alternative choices of trading ratios and permit allocations could have improved welfare by over €640 million annually. </p
Swedish Newspaper Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming, 2000-2025 - August 2025
No full textThe Media and Climate Change Observatory Data monitors 131 sources (across newspapers, radio and TV) in 59 countries in seven different regions around the world. Data is assembled by accessing archives through the Lexis Nexis, Proquest and Factiva databases via the University of Colorado libraries. More information may be found at: http://mecco.colorado.edu.</p
World Radio Coverage of Climate Change or Global Warming, 2000-2025 - August 2025
No full textThe Media and Climate Change Observatory Data monitors 131 sources (across newspapers, radio and TV) in 59 countries in seven different regions around the world. Data is assembled by accessing archives through the Lexis Nexis, Proquest and Factiva databases via the University of Colorado libraries. More information may be found at: http://mecco.colorado.edu.</p
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