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Negotiating Acculturation: A Qualitative Study of Muslim American Women
Get PDFThe estimated population of Muslims in the United States ranges from 3 to 7 million (Bukhari, 2003; Pew Research Center, 2017; Strumm, 2003), with an estimated 69-75% of Muslim Americans being 1st or 2nd generation immigrants (defined as those born abroad and those with immigrant parents, respectively), hailing from over 80 countries (Bukhari, 2003; Pew Research Center, 2017). Thus, most Muslims are navigating the complex processes of acculturation, which is the adaptation of behavioral, cognitive, and affective aspects of one’s cultural functioning, which result from consistent contact with different cultural contexts and groups (Driscoll & Wierzbicki, 2012). Research has noted how women in immigrant communities, and Muslim communities in particular, are often expected to serve as the preservers and conveyors of culture, tradition, and religion (al-Huraibi & Konradi, 2012; Ozyurt, 2010), while also being “agents of integration” or “bridge builders” between host country and country of origin cultures (Ozyurt, 2010, p. 296). Hence, the current study is a phenomenological qualitative study that investigated the lived experiences of 1.5 and 2nd generation Muslim American immigrant women in their negotiation of acculturative processes while holding multiple intersecting identities. The study employed open-ended individual interviews with 12 women. The findings showed four main themes that indicate negotiating cultures, identities, experiencing pervasive otherness and marginalization, and experience of Muslim American women of immigrant descent as they navigate acculturation at the intersection of two cultures, a minoritized and vilified religion, and womanhood. The study expands the acculturation literature and literature on Muslim American women of immigrant descent broadly, providing us with knowledge around acculturation within this population, as well as clinical considerations
The Resolution of Proactive Interference in Young Children
No full textImagine you are cooking and the recipe calls for 1⁄3 cup of flour and 1⁄2 cup of sugar. When you go to retrieve these items you might accidentally add 1⁄2 cup of flour. This is due to a phenomenon called Proactive Interference (PI), when during retrieval, previously relevant information competes with currently relevant information, resulting in errors and/or slower responses (Badre & Wagner, 2007; Bunge & Wright, 2007; O’Reilly & Frank, 2006). PI has been postulated as a main cause of limitations in WM, (Anderson & Neely, 1996; Bunting, 2006; Endress & Potter, 2014; Kane & Engle, 2000) a limited capacity system responsible for the activation and manipulation of items in order to solve a task (Baddeley, 1992). The limitations of this system are a central interest in the field because this is in stark contrast with long term memory that has no known limitations. WM is required for a large number of important cognitive abilities such as mental math, playing chess or doing puzzles. Thus, understanding these limitations has important real-world implications.
In a series of experiments, using a delayed match retrieval paradigm (Kaldy et al., 2016), I ask whether young children (between the ages of 18 months and 7.5 years) are sensitive to PI and whether the ability to inhibit proactive interference strengthens across development.
In the adult literature PI is a well-established phenomenon (Endress & Potter, 2014; Kane & Engle, 2000; Oberauer et al., 2016). Traditionally, this was measured with auditory stimuli (Keppel & Underwood, 1962). Adults were asked to memorize items from a series of lists and performance decreased as trials progressed. It has since been established in visual WM (Endress & Potter, 2014; Hartshorne, 2008; Makovski & Jiang, 2008), although how robust these effects might be is a subject of debate (Lin & Luck, 2012). But to date, no one has systematically studied PI in children younger than 4 years old. Thus, in a series of experiments I investigate the magnitude (and the source) of the PI effect in children between the ages of 18 months and 7.5 years.
In Chapter 1, I review the extensive research looking at PI resolution abilities in adults. I then identify a major gap in the literature and suggest that more research is needed to understand how PI is treated in early childhood. In adults, neural mechanisms in prefrontal regions (particularly the left inferior frontal gyrus and posterior parietal cortex) are activated when inhibiting irrelevant information. Thus, we hypothesize that inhibiting PI becomes easier because of a strengthening of neural networks in the prefrontal regions that are not yet fully developed in childhood.
Although few papers investigated the resolution of PI in children, there is some research that suggests that as age increases so does the ability to resolve PI. For example,Kail (2002) conducted a meta-analysis that showed that children become better at inhibiting the effects of PI from age 4 into adulthood. This meta-analysis was not conducted using studies that directly studied PI. Instead, he analyzed studies that investigated memory in young children and found that performance decreased across trials. But no paper to date has investigated this in children under 4 years of age. Thus, in Chapter 2, I investigate three main questions. 1) 3-year-old children are, in fact, highly sensitive to the effects of PI. 2) Interfering information stems from reactivated information from long(er) term memory and from not information that is lingering in WM from previous trials. 3) PI resolution abilities improve across early childhood.
In Chapter 3, I investigate how even younger children (18 to 30 months) resolve PI. In order to follow open science practices for rigor and reproducibility, all studies reported in Chapter 2 and 3 were preregistered on Open Science Framework and all stimuli, code and results are openly available as well.
Thus, I establish, in the youngest age to date, that younger children have more difficulty inhibiting the effects of PI than older children and my data suggests that this ability progresses over early childhood. This could have important information regarding the mechanisms underlying WM. In addition to the theoretical implications, there are important methodological implications as well. Traditionally, WM capacity has been studied in infants and young children by presenting them with a series of repeating identical or similar stimuli hence, inducing PI, which might vastly underestimate WM capacity to date
Perspectives of Hispanic/Latina Women Ages 60 and Over on the Impact of Single Motherhood and Their Long-Term Financial Well-Being
Get PDFUnmarried women over the age of 60 continue to experience disproportionate rates of adult poverty in the United States, while families headed by single mothers experience the highest poverty rates. This study explores the long-term impact of single motherhood on financial wellness through the perspective of Hispanic/Latina women ages 60 and over who have experienced single motherhood in Massachusetts. A transdisciplinary study, it utilizes intersectionality as a theoretical framework, employs feminist standpoint informed inquiry methods to document lived experiences through in-depth interviews, and engages diffraction as a mode of praxis as it intra-acts with narratives and explores the systems and structures participant lives are entangled with.
As it explores the perspectives and narratives of participants regarding their experiences with single motherhood and their financial well-being, this research documents and shares the voices of this often neglected and excluded population. It considers the notion of single motherhood within the public imaginary, and its influence on the phenomenon and lived experience of single motherhood. In doing so it engages with impacts of single motherhood on long-term financial well-being in a way that could inform future research as well as inform the development, enhancement, and/or revision of public policies.
A key finding of this research is the role of stigma and shame on financial well-being and its multifaceted entanglement with financial wellness. Stigma and shame are explored diffractively through an intersectional lens as it intra-acts with facets of participant identity such as single motherhood, race and ethnicity, and immigration status. Another finding of this research is the role of structural and systemic barriers that intra-act with participant lives and impact their financial wellness. This study considers the impact of material structures including policies and practices, as well as social systems including problematic aspects of resilience, public perceptions, and popular myths, on the lives of participants. Finally, this study highlights the need for further research into the possible links between experiencing single motherhood and rates of poverty among unmarried women, especially women of color, over the age of sixty
Quantum Complexity Annealing: Protocols for Disentangling and Stabilizing
No full textEntanglement is arguably the most distinctive feature of quantum mechanics. Since the quantum theory was formulated, the emergence of correlations between sub-parts of a physical system has led, on one hand, to the derivation of numerous interesting paradoxes and, on the other, to the development of information protocols that cannot be implemented in a classical framework. In particular, one of the most thriving areas of research is devoted to the development of quantum algorithms that are intended to outperform their classical analogues. Entanglement therefore represents an important resource for the creation of quantum computers, but its quantification in terms of entropies of entanglement is found to be insufficient to determine whether a quantum advantage over classical computation can be achieved.
In this thesis we will review the concept of complexity of entanglement, that characterizes quantum states that can not be efficiently simulated on classical computers and can therefore lead to a speed-up when employed for computational tasks. We will show that the complexity of entanglement is related to the emergence of quantum chaos, the ability to simulate random states and the distance from a class of classically simulable states called stabilizers. Moreover, complex states are shown to be characterized by robustness against certain annealing schedules (disentanglers) aiming at reducing the amount of entanglement within the system. We show how the efficiency of a disentangler relates to multiple probes of complexity on a 1-parameter family of quantum many-body states, and how tuning the parameter can drive a transition between the different complexity phases. We also adopt the same annealing procedure to learn the retrieval of scrambled information from a black hole and we conclude that the learning process is hindered by the conjunction of entanglement and non-stabilizerness within the system. Lastly, we propose an enhanced algorithm to anneal both entanglement and non-stabilizerness, in an attempt to efficiently reduce the overall entanglement complexity of random circuits. We present encouraging results for small systems that show how the new protocol outperforms the original disentangler with the same number of circuit updates. We stress the necessity for an efficient way to compute non-stabilizerness, in order to scale the results to higher system sizes
Addressing Health Crises through Courts? Climate Litigation in Latin America, the Right to Health and Vulnerable Populations
Get PDFAs Latin America faces increasing climate-related health crises that disproportionately affect populations experiencing poverty and social exclusion, it becomes increasingly urgent to realize the most vulnerable\u27s right to health. While the region\u27s new constitutionalism (NLAC) has made progress in protecting this right, it has only recently begun to intersect with climate change law through rights-based climate litigation. This dissertation takes a transdisciplinary multi-methods research approach to answer the following question: How do health crises emerge within, and how are they addressed by courts through, domestic climate litigation in Latin America? Specifically, it examines how health concerns for vulnerable populations are raised and addressed in climate litigation, aiming to identify how the profiles, motives, and resources of claimants and judges influence how they protect the right to health of the most marginalized groups. By also considering the legal and broader socio-political contexts intertwined with climate-related health crises, the research aims to contribute to a better understanding of Latin America\u27s climate litigation by exploring how the socio-ecological dimensions of health vulnerability are reflected in and redressed by judicial decisions.
The dissertation concludes that within the corpus of climate litigation in Latin America (77 cases of which 61 are rights-based), health crises manifest and are addressed by domestic constitutional courts in diverse manners, none of which sufficiently address the full socio-ecological spectrum of health vulnerability. This partial manifestation of health crises is underpinned by the complex interplay between the socio-political realities of both claimants and judges, which influence their framing and utilization of normative tools. In particular, while the right to health has emerged as a prominent instrument in climate litigation, enabling claimants to obtain legal standing and courts to justify the cessation of climate change-inducing activities, the social dimension of vulnerability (health’s relationship with poverty and social exclusion) remains partially redressed. For the most part, climate litigation serves as a platform for unidimensional ecological concerns. The research thus contends that the judicial pathway is not currently sufficient as the sole mechanism for addressing health crises.
However, there is potential for improving climate litigation’s alignment with climate justice by broadening strategic and interpretative horizons for claimants and courts to account for the realities faced by those most vulnerable to climate change. To achieve this, employing socio-ecological bottom-up strategies by litigant civil society organizations, adopting open legal standing rules, embracing broad-ranging remedial designs within progressive legal traditions, and deepening judges’ understanding of claimants\u27 social contexts seem to be crucial components. Currently, these prospects appear more likely to materialize in Colombia and Ecuador than in Chile and Mexico.
Abstract (Spanish)
A medida que América Latina enfrenta crecientes crisis de salud relacionadas con el clima, las cuales afectan de manera desproporcionada a las poblaciones en condiciones de pobreza y exclusión social, se vuelve cada vez más urgente garantizar el derecho a la salud de estos segmentos de la población. Aunque el nuevo constitucionalismo de la región (NLAC) ha progresado en la protección de dicho derecho, sólo recientemente ha comenzado a intersectar con el derecho del cambio climático a través de los litigios climáticos basados en derechos humanos. Esta disertación adopta un enfoque de investigación transdisciplinario y multimétodo para responder a la siguiente pregunta: ¿Cómo emergen y cómo son abordadas por los tribunales nacionales las crisis de salud en el contexto de los litigios climáticos en América Latina? Específicamente, examina cómo se presentan y adjudican las preocupaciones de salud de las poblaciones vulnerables en los litigios climáticos, con el objetivo de identificar cómo los perfiles, motivos y recursos de los demandantes y jueces influyen en la protección del derecho a la salud de los grupos más marginados. Al considerar también los contextos legales y sociopolíticos que enmarcan las crisis de salud exacerbadas por el cambio climático, la investigación contribuye a una mejor comprensión de los litigios climáticos de América Latina al explorar cómo se reflejan y se remedian las dimensiones socioecológicas de la vulnerabilidad en salud en las decisiones judiciales.
La disertación concluye que, dentro del corpus del litigio climático en América Latina (77 casos de los cuales 61 son basados en derechos), las crisis de salud se manifiestan y son abordadas por los tribunales constitucionales nacionales de diversas maneras, ninguna de las cuales atiende suficientemente el espectro socioecológico de la vulnerabilidad en salud. Esta manifestación parcial de las crisis de salud ocurre debido a la compleja interacción entre las realidades sociopolíticas tanto de los demandantes como de los jueces, las cuales influyen en su comprensión y consecuente utilización de herramientas normativas. En particular, si bien el derecho a la salud ha surgido como un instrumento prominente en los litigios climáticos, permitiendo a los demandantes demostrar legitimación y a los tribunales justificar la cesación de actividades que contribuyen al cambio climático, la dimensión social de la vulnerabilidad (la relación de la salud con la pobreza y la exclusión social) es abordada parcialmente. En su mayoría, el litigio climático ha fungido como plataforma para preocupaciones ecológicas unidimensionales. Por tanto, la investigación sostiene que el camino judicial no es actualmente suficiente como único mecanismo para abordar las crisis de salud.
No obstante, existe potencial para mejorar la alineación de los litigios climáticos con la justicia climática ampliando los horizontes estratégicos e interpretativos para que los demandantes y los tribunales consideren las realidades a las que se enfrentan los segmentos de la población más vulnerables al cambio climático. Para lograr esto, se consideran componentes cruciales: el empleo de estrategias socioecológicas de abajo hacia arriba por parte de las organizaciones de la sociedad civil litigante, la legitimación activa amplia, la adopción de diseños remediales de amplio alcance y de tradiciones legales progresistas, y el profundizar la comprensión de los jueces sobre los contextos sociales de los demandantes. Actualmente, estas perspectivas parecen más propensas a materializarse en Colombia y Ecuador que en Chile y México
Part-Time Students/Full-Time Lives: Underserving Part-Time Community College Students
No full textIn Massachusetts and across the nation, the percentage of community college students who attend part-time averages more than 60% (Massachusetts Department of Higher Education, 2023; AACC, 2023). Additionally, approximately 80% of students have been enrolled part-time for some of their time in community college (CCSSE, 2018). However, despite their substantial representation at community colleges, this population has historically been not only underrepresented in both quantitative and qualitative scholarship on community college students, but mostly cast in a negative light. Also, part-time students have been overlooked by recent reform efforts aimed primarily at retention, persistence, and graduation (Mann Levesque, 2018). This exploratory interview study of 15 students (10 enrolled; five stopped out) from four Massachusetts community colleges sought to re-frame dominant narratives by centering part-time students’ voices. This study used Perna’s (2006) Proposed Conceptual Model of Student College Choice to examine students’ reasons for attending community college part-time. The study indicated that part-time students’ academic, personal, and professional goals and needs vary widely, and many are exercising their personal agency to achieve these goals and meet these needs. Specifically, I found that (1) students were choosing between community college and not entering higher education instead of choosing among different types of institutions; (2) students did not decide to stay enrolled or leave college specifically due to experiences with faculty, advising, or financial aid; (3) students felt comfortable leaving and returning to their local community college; (4) students engage in intentional choice-making based on the information they have to determine when to stay and when to leave; and (5) students’ workplace served as a form of social and cultural capital for some first-generation and immigrant college students. The findings led me to adapt Perna’s (2006) model into a Part-Time Community College Choice and Persistence Model to show how students draw on their own situated contexts to make intentional decisions around enrollment and persistence. The dissertation concludes with implications for future research and practice
Radical Routes: The Formation of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union Local 8751
Get PDFThis thesis is both a history and an examination of the formation of the Boston School Bus Drivers Union, situating their formation in both the labor movement of the 1970s and desegregation. Thrown into the midst of the storm of desegregation the drivers are set up for failure by the Boston School Committee. Forced to unionize due to unsafe working conditions and pay cuts, the unique make-up of the drivers allow for the success. Filled with community organizers, feminists, anti-war protestors, anti-racists, members of the LGBTQ+ community, leftists, and socialists, they use new tactics, willing to challenge established union leadership and traditional organizing tactics. Their resounding success allows for the formation of one of the most militant rank-and-file unions to this day. Utilizing oral histories with members of the union this thesis attempts to bring their story to light for the first time
Genetic Regulation of Meiosis and Germ Cell Maintenance in Zebrafish
No full textInfertility is a serious problem for millions of couples who wish to have children. Globally more than 10% of couples suffer from infertility due to genetic, epigenetic, and environmental factors. Among these about 50% of cases occur due to genetic factors such as aneuploidy and genetic mutations affecting development of the gametes (i.e. sperm and eggs). Although many genes are known to be involved in germ cell development, genetic causes of infertility are still largely unexplained. Therefore, it is imperative to investigate genes involved in reproductive processes. During my thesis project, we identified adad1 (adenosine deaminase domain containing 1) mutant zebrafish, which develop as sterile males. Further examination revealed complete lack of germ cells in adult mutant fish, however germ cells populated the gonad, proliferated, and entered meiosis in larval and juvenile fish. We also found that adad1 mutants have defects in meiosis and spermatogonial stem cell maintenance. Therefore, adad1 is necessary for meiosis and germline maintenance in zebrafish. We also studied the function of the adad1 related gene adad2 in the zebrafish germline. Our results show that adad2 is also necessary for germline maintenance in zebrafish. However, adad2 functions independently to adad1 and is needed earlier in germ cell development than that of adad1. Furthermore, we investigated the roles of the meiotic cohesin complex protein Smc1b in zebrafish. Our results indicate that Smc1b is required for meiosis and fertility in zebrafish. Taken together, our study identified adad1, adad2, and smc1b as essential factors of fertility and germ cell development in zebrafish. We believe these findings will help us to reduce infertility since all three genes are conserved in human
Reprogramming of Androgen Receptor Signaling in Prostate Cancer Progression
No full textAppraising the crucial role of androgen receptor (AR) in prostate cancer (PCa) initiation and progression, androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) is considered the most effective therapy. However, PCa can adapt to ADT with overexpression of full-length AR (AR- FL) and constitutively active AR-V7 splice variant due to gene amplification or other mechanisms. While these events have been intensively studied, it is still unclear how AR-FL or AR-V7 overexpression may induce functionally important transcriptional re- programming. We generated stable PCa cell lines to overexpress inducible AR-FL or AR-V7 and performed combined cistrome and transcriptome analyses to dissect the role of their overexpression in driving chromosome structural and transcriptional changes. We found that overexpression of AR-FL alone in conjunction with lower androgen levels can rapidly activate a distinct transcriptional program that is enriched for DNA dam- age repair pathways and predicted the engagement of an epigenetic factor EZH2. We also found that AR-V7 can activate a distinct metastatic program by functioning as a “pioneer factor-like” protein to access compact chromatin regions. This AR-V7 unique transcription program can activate a stem cell and metastasis driver, SOX9, and lead to accelerated bone metastasis. Moreover, we also studied high-dose androgen-induced AR transcriptional repression program using single-cell RNA-seq analysis and revealed differ- ential responses in PCa tumors with Rb-proficient and deficient populations. Overall, my dissertation work has revealed the differential transcriptional reprogramming triggered by overexpression of AR-FL, AR-V7, or high-dose androgen in ADT-resistant PCa
Exploring the Roles of Parent Emotional Styles and Children’s Coping Skills in the Emotional and Behavioral Sequelae of Community Violence Exposure
No full textExposure to violence during childhood can lead to a variety of adverse emotional and behavioral outcomes. These developmental outcomes are influenced by child-, family-, and community-level characteristics. This study explored the relations between violence exposure, parent emotional styles, children’s coping, and children’s emotional and behavioral outcomes. Data was collected electronically during the beginning of the COVID pandemic in 2020. Parents of 46 school age children (61% male, ages 5-12) from New York City participated in the study. Given the small sample size, effect sizes of correlations and multiple regressions were interpreted in addition to significance levels. Higher exposure to violence was not significantly associated with child emotion/behavior symptoms, child coping, or parent emotional styles. Higher child coping was significantly associated with lower child anxious/depressed and aggressive behavior problems. Associations between parent emotional styles and children’s coping and behavior problems were counterintuitive but perhaps reflective of parent bias in report of child experiences. For instance, higher emotionally responsive parenting attitudes were not significantly associated with child coping or child emotion/behavior outcomes. In contrast, higher emotionally dismissive parenting attitudes were significantly associated with higher child coping and lower child anxious/depressed and aggressive symptoms. There were no significant interaction effects for child coping or parent emotional styles as moderators of the association between violence exposure and child outcomes. Findings and implications for future research are discussed