19468 research outputs found
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Conservation Targeting: Models and Policy for Climate Resilience of coastal habitat and heritage resources in Virginia’s Coastal Zone
No full textIn response to accelerating sea level rise and its anticipated impacts on coastal habitats and species, we developed spatial models and maps of shoreline habitat distributions in Coastal Virginia to the year 2100. This report is a culmination of a three-year effort to develop and serve geospatial data to inform land use decision making within the context of projected habitat and current elemental occurrences to promote habitat and species persistence and resilience. The project was a collaboration of the Center for Coastal Resources Management (CCRM) at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation, Virginia Natural Heritage Program (DCR VNHP) and the former Virginia Coastal Policy Center (VCPC). The report is organized around the tasks and products for each member of the project team. The first section is reporting efforts by CCRM, followed by content describing the work done by DCR VNHP. Policy analysis by VCPC follows next with summary and conclusion by CCRM last. The complete report from DCR VNHP is included in Appendix 3.Virginia Institute of Marine Scienc
Utilizing Chemical Biology To Develop New Alkyne Therapeutics
No full textAlkynes are valuable synthetic building blocks in organic chemistry and offer crucial reactivity for bioorthogonal chemistry. Herein, this moiety is explored in the context of developing classic small molecule therapeutics, and as a non-canonical amino acid (ncAA) orthogonal handle in bioconjugations. Namely, this functionality was utilized for the production of potent antibiotics, as well as potential biological tools for the diagnosis and treatment of prostate and breast cancer, respectively.ChemistryMaster of Science (M.Sc.
Citizens In Arms: Black Americans, Mobility, And Armed Self-Defense At The Turn Of The Century
No full textCitizens in Arms: Black Americans, Mobility, and Armed Self-Defense at the Turn of the Century explores the grassroots activism and direct action of Black Americans during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on their use of armed self-defense to safeguard rights established under the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. I analyze the discourse surrounding freedom of movement, armed self-defense, and constitutional rights through the perspective of Black newspapers owned and operated by Black Americans. These papers served as crucial platforms for expression and advocacy within the Black American community, offering valuable insights into how Black Americans perceived and defended their rights against racial violence. I argue that Black individuals and communities strategically employed armed self-defense as a means of protection and empowerment in the face of pervasive racial violence and oppression. This dissertation underscores how constitutional guarantees of emancipation from slavery, due process, equal protection under the law, and voting rights intersected with freedom of movement and armed self-defense in the lived experiences of Black Americans. Additionally, this project demonstrates that armed self-defense emerged as a necessary response to ongoing racial violence and intimidation faced by Black Americans in their pursuit of political participation and equality. By emphasizing the role of armed self-defense and Black mobility, this research contributes to a nuanced understanding of Black resistance within the broader struggle for civil rights.American StudiesDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
George Eliot’s Tragic Heroines: The Legacy of Antigone and Other Greek Tragedies in The Mill on the Floss and Middlemarch
No full textGeorge Eliot (1819-1880) was profoundly influenced by classical Greek literature, particularly tragedies. Despite societal expectations for women of her time, Eliot immersed herself in the study of ancient texts. Drawing from her extensive knowledge, Eliot skillfully integrated allusions to Greek tragedy into her novels, notably "The Mill on the Floss" and "Middlemarch." Through an analysis of these two works, this thesis explores Eliot's reimagining of classical themes within the context of Victorian society through her own tragic heroines, Maggie Tulliver and Dorothea Brooke. By reframing these timeless narratives for her contemporary audience, Eliot not only honored her classical influences but also provided Victorian women with accessible portrayals of female agency and defiance. By emulating rather than imitating ancient narratives, Eliot breathes new life into timeless themes of struggle, trust, and triumph, echoing through her tragic heroines' experiences. Through her works, Eliot transcends historical boundaries, appealing to the perennial nature of human experience and contributing to an evolving tradition of classical reinterpretation.EnglishBachelors of Arts (BA
Starting Early: Returns on Kindergarten Attendance in Indonesia
No full textIndonesia is a rapidly developing economy, having averaged 5.26% economic growth from 2000 to 2019; over the same time, it has achieved near-universal primary school attendance. However, there are concerns about the quality of Indonesian education, with no improvement in standardized test scores between 2012 and 2022. Early childhood interventions are a critical part of human capital accumulation and skills- building, and the efficacy of interventions such as kindergarten in developing countries like Indonesia is under-studied. Using data from the Indonesian Family Life Survey (IFLS) and Village Potential Statistics (PODES), I examine the effects of kindergarten on educational outcomes in Indonesia, focusing on schooling and cognitive performance. My empirical strategy entails ordinary least-squares (OLS), mother fixed-effects (FE), and instrumental variable (IV) estimation, where my instrument is the number of kindergartens per 10,000 individuals in each locality. I find that kindergarten has a significant positive association with schooling, associated with an additional 1.89 years of education. Additionally, I find evidence that kindergarten’s positive association with educational outcomes fades out as time passes, there being little to no evidence of significant positive effects after the conclusion of junior high school. I also find little to no evidence that attending kindergarten has a significant association with performance on cognitive tests–suggesting there is a gap between schooling and skills learned in the classroom. My results motivate a closer look at this gap, as well as exploring the effects of kindergarten attendance on earnings or social outcomes such as delinquency.EconomicsBachelors of Arts (BA
Investigating Organic Fluorophores for Blink-Based Multiplexing
No full textTo deepen our understanding of both biological and material systems, visualization of the complexity occurring on the nanometer scale is critical. Multicolor super-resolved fluorescence studies allow for a nuanced understanding of intricate structures within cells, nanomaterials, and polymers but are limited by the necessity of spectrally distinct probes or time intensive procedures. Recently, we demonstrated an alternative method termed blink-based multiplexing (BBM) wherein spectrally-overlapped emitters are classified based solely on their blinking dynamics (i.e., fluctuations in emission intensity under constant excitation caused by intrinsic photo-physical or -chemical transitions) instead of spectral color. This study parses the relationships between structure and blinking activity of rhodamine, BODIPY, and anthraquinone fluorophores to ultimately optimize BBM performance. Through change point detection and multinomial logistic regression analyses, we show that BBM can harness differences in spectral diffusion, charge transfer kinetics, and photo-stability to distinguish and accurately classify fluorophores. Informed by their photo-physical or -chemical properties, BBM can simultaneously differentiate groups of 2 or 3 spectrally-overlapped emitters using a single laser with ≥ 93% accuracy. Ongoing and future studies utilizing a new optical set-up (i.e., an electron multiplying charge-coupled device) and fluorophores more conducive to practical imaging applications are also outlined.ChemistryBachelors of Science (BS
A Cooperative High Precision Dredge Survey to Assess the Mid-Atlantic Sea Scallop Resource Area in 2021 and 2022
No full textFor the sea scallop, Placopecten magellanicus, current and accurate information related to the abundance and distribution of adult and juvenile scallops is essential for effective management of the resource. Scallop management is a combination of input and output controls, with a focus on spatial area management. The continued prosperity of the scallop resource and fishery is dependent on both periodic and large incoming year classes, as well as a mechanism to delineate the scale of a recruitment event and subsequently monitor the growth and abundance of these scallops over time. Acknowledging the importance of accurate, timely, and meaningful information necessary to meet the management objectives and support the fishery, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) conducted a synoptic high resolution stratified random survey of the Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) scallop resource from the VA/NC border to Block Island, RI encompassing the Mid-Atlantic Access Areas, as well as the open areas of the MAB resource area during the spring/summer of 2021 and 2022. The primary objective of these surveys was to assess the abundance and distribution of sea scallops in this area, culminating with spatially explicit annual estimates of total and exploitable biomass by Scallop Area Management Simulator (SAMS) Area. Secondary project objectives for each survey year included: 1. Finfish bycatch species composition and catch rates, 2. Scallop biological sampling (length:weight relationship, disease, product quality parameters, and shell samples for ageing), and 3. Sea scallop dredge performance (commercial and survey dredges). Survey results were presented to the Sea Scallop Plan Development Team (PDT) to inform management decisions for fishing years (FY) 2021 and 2022 (i.e., access area access and catch allocation). Survey data were also provided to the Northeast Fisheries Science Center (NEFSC) in 2021 and 2022 for use in projections for the annual specification process for FY 2021 and 2022 and for use in upcoming stock assessments. Results indicated that the exploitable biomass in the traditional access areas and open area off of Long Island remained high in both years, although recruitment was limited. Analysis of relative gear performance for the Coonamessett Farm Turtle Deflector Dredge (TDD) suggested that this dredge is more efficient than the New Bedford style dredge.Virginia Institute of Marine Scienc
Efficient Parallelization Of Irregular Applications On Gpu Architectures
No full textWith the enlarging computation capacity of general Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), leveraging GPUs to accelerate parallel applications has become a critical topic in academia and industry. However, a wide range of irregular applications with a computation-/memory-intensive nature cannot easily achieve high GPU utilization. The challenges mainly involve the following aspects: first, data dependence leads to a coarse-grained kernel; second, heavy GPU memory usage may cause frequent memory evictions and extra overhead of I/O; third, specific computation patterns produce memory redundancies; last, workload balance and data reusability conjunctly benefit the overall performance, but there may exist a dynamic trade-off between them. Targeting these challenges, this dissertation proposes multiple optimizations to accelerate parallel irregular applications on GPU architectures. The dissertation focuses on two real-world applications as case studies: one is calculating many-body correlation functions in a large-scale scientific system; the other one is the eALS-based matrix factorization recommendation system. To accelerate the calculations of many-body correlation functions, this dissertation presents three frameworks in GPU memory management and multi-GPU scheduling. Firstly, an optimized systematic GPU memory management framework, MemHC, utilizing a series of new memory reduction designs in GPU memory allocation, CPU/GPU communications, and GPU memory oversubscription. MemHC employs duplication-aware management and lazy release of GPU memories to corresponding host managing for better data reusability. Moreover, MemHC designs a novel eviction policy called Pre-Protected LRU (Least Recently Used) to reduce evictions and increase memory hits. Secondly, an enhanced multi-GPU scheduling framework, MICCO, particularly by taking both data dimension (e.g., data reuse and data eviction) and computation dimension into account. This work first performs a comprehensive study on the interplay of data reuse and load balance and brings up two new concepts: local reuse pattern and reuse bound for the optimal trade-off between them. Based on this study, MICCO designs a heuristic scheduling algorithm and a machine-learning-based regression model to generate the optimal setting of reuse bounds. Thirdly, a locality-aware multi-GPU scheduling framework. This scheduler leverages pipeline batch generation with a looking ahead strategy. The scheduler builds local dependency graphs based on locality analysis to reorganize input data for memory transfer reduction and better data reuse, achieving up to 79.92% memory cost reduced and 1.67x speedup. To parallelize the eALS-based recommendation system, this dissertation proposes an efficient CPU/GPU heterogeneous recommendation system, HEALS. HEALS employs newly designed architecture-adaptive data formats to achieve load balance and good data locality on CPU and GPU. To mitigate the data dependence, HEALS presents a CPU/GPU collaboration model for both task parallelism and data parallelism. Additionally, HEALS optimizes this collaboration model with kernel-communication overlapping and dynamic workload partition. HEALS also applies various kernel parallel techniques for better GPU utilization: loop unrolling, vectorization, and warp reduction. In summary, this dissertation efficiently accelerates two typical irregular applications on GPUs by building four frameworks, including CPU/GPU collaboration, GPU memory management, and multi-GPU scheduling.Computer ScienceDoctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.
Evaluation Of A Modification To The Tuning In To Teens Whole School Approach: A Pilot Study
No full textThe Tuning in to Teens (TINT; Kehoe et al., 2014) parenting program is a preventative intervention program developed in Australia known to improve parenting practices that, in turn, improve adolescent emotional competencies (e.g., emotional awareness, adaptive emotion regulation). The goal of this research was to test the efficacy of a modification to the TINT program that was delivered directly to adolescents in the United States. Using a community sample, 23 youth (Mage= 11.78 years, SD = 1.14; n = 14 girls, 60.9% White) took part in a 6-week modified TINT program in two small group settings. We examined whether there were changes in difficulties with emotional awareness, emotion regulation, and friend emotion socialization practices at two time points that were six weeks apart by comparing the intervention to the comparison (no intervention) group. To examine the efficacy of the program, we measured five process variables via self-report data from adolescents (e.g., feasibility, content mastery). Results indicated that youth in the intervention group had a slight reduction in difficulties with emotional awareness and improved in providing supportive emotion socialization practices to their close friends from T1 to T2. There was a statistically significant increase in emotion dysregulation in the intervention group, however, mean scores revealed very low levels of overall dysregulation at both time points. There were no significant changes in emotion inhibition or emotion regulation coping in the treatment group. This study suggests that a community-based intervention delivered directly to youth may be promising in terms of improving youth emotion socialization practices, emotion regulation, and emotional awareness. The results are discussed within an emotion socialization theoretical framework that considers how emotion coaching approaches help young adolescents improve their emotional and social competencies.PsychologyMaster of Science (M.Sc.