10060 research outputs found
Sort by
Gut Microbiome Changes in Urbanizing Brazil and Their Implications for Metabolic Health
Get PDFUrbanization has been associated with significant changes in diet, environment and lifestyle, all of which can influence the composition and function of the human gut microbiota. This meta-analysis systematically reviewed and synthesized findings from 11 studies examining gut microbiota differences between urban and rural populations in Brazil. The analysis focused on microbial diversity, taxonomic composition, dietary patterns, and implication for metabolic diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes. Results showed that rural populations consistently exhibited higher alpha diversity and greater abundance of beneficial short-chain fatty acid producing bacteria, including Prevotella, Faecalibacterium, and Treponema, reflecting traditional, high fiber diets. In contrast, urban populations demonstrated lower microbial richness and increased presence of taxa associated with inflammation and metabolic dysfunction, such as bacteroides, Escherichia coli and Fusobacterium. Urban groups also showed greater exposures to processed foods, simple sugars, and food additives. These microbial and dietary shifts align with increased risk for noncommunicable diseases in urban settings. The findings emphasize the importance of microbiome-informed public health strategies, including promoting fiber-rich diets and reducing ultra-processed food consumption
Weaving an Alternative Food System: The Implications of Campesino Community Structures for Food Sovereignty in New England
Get PDFThis exploration seeks to detangle the diverse lines of thinking, reasoning, and acting that make up the concept of food sovereignty, and to do so with the intention of understanding what its most actionable principles are. The topic is inspired by the traditional community-scale agriculture of campesino communities throughout Latin America, but specifically in the Valles Centrales of Oaxaca, Mexico. The ultimate questions are if and how the collectivity that often exists in these cultures can be applied to local food systems in New England to support regional food sovereignty. The ideas presented are drawn from personal experience, theoretical academic articles, practical case studies, and professional conversations.
The work begins with a personal narrative in order to geographically and culturally locate the reader. It goes on to give historical context for the emergence of the food sovereignty movement in Latin America, and continues into an explanation of how the industrial food system is intertwined with capitalism. Directly following this, as a counterpoint, descriptions of social collaboration around food are given, both from traditional practices in Latin America as well as from more recently established initiatives in the region. Current perspectives on food sovereignty are then outlined as a precursor to an analysis justifying why community-scale collaboration is an effective way of going about building regional food sovereignty. Finally, some practical considerations for organizing a community food system are discussed, acting as a transition to imagining the present and future of an alternative food system in New England. Examples and input from five local businesses and organizations are included in this final section in order to ground what would otherwise be a mainly theoretical exploration. The objective of having such delineated sections is to clearly emphasize some of the most relevant issues relating to community-scale liberation around food.
As a whole, the present work is an effort to tease out the contradictions present in the dominant food system and begin to suggest ways not to change it, but to weave another through it using both emergent and deeply historical tactics so that the former might eventually either transform or fall away in pieces
Reimagining the College on the Hill: A History of the Black Working Class at Connecticut College, 1911-1955
Get PDFThe stories of domestic labor at this institution demand a reassessment of the history of the College, its relationship with the city of New London, and the life of the College’s first Black graduate. While Connecticut College was founded explicitly to offer women in the state of Connecticut a chance at a higher education, the College’s progressive mission was tempered from the start by its elitist ambitions and its reliance on the hierarchies of race, class and gender that shaped both American education and labor at the dawn of the 20th century. From its earliest days, the College made an effort to attract a predominately white elite student body at the expense of local working-class students. By establishing itself as an elite white space Connecticut College sought to differentiate students from cleaning staff in dormitories not only through class, but by explicitly hiring Black couples to live on campus and perform the labor students were not expected to do themselves. This created a unique environment where an employee’s labor, love and relationships, and home life fell under the surveillance and control of a white supervisor. This reality impacted, but did not define, the lives of the first Black employees at the College who continued to make community both within and outside College walls. Growing up as a Black working-class woman in New London, Lois Taylor ’31 also straddled two worlds during her time at Connecticut College. Commuting from home, she inhabited both white spaces on campus as the College’s first Black graduate and supported her local Black community. Her time at Connecticut College uniquely allows us to recognize the critical differences that marked the Black student experience from that of a Black employee. However, like those who worked at the College, Lois Taylor was not defined by this institution. She defined her own life and wrote her own story
Studies Towards the Total Synthesis of Guanacastepene A
No full textGuanacastepene A, a tricyclic natural product found in a Costa Rican fungus, poses an interesting synthetic challenge due to its complex ring structure and its promise as a potent antibiotic. The highly functionalized 5-7 bicyclic core of Guanacastepene A has previously been synthesized, but challenges with a key Heck reaction severely limited progress. A new sequence has been designed to efficiently reach an intermediate allylic diol, a key intermediate before cyclization of the seven membered ring of Guanacastepene A.
Next, we hope this synthesis can efficiently be scaled up, allowing for larger production of the cyclization product. This will hopefully allow for functional group interconversions and a ring closing metathesis reaction to form the third, six membered ring of Guanacastepene A. Further functional group manipulations will hopefully complete the synthesis of Guanacastepene A using the Ovaska methodology
Maybe We Read This Wrong: Rehabilitating the Female Bildungsroman by Focusing on Growth, Not Resolution
No full textThis thesis reconsiders the progress heroines make in Female Bildungsromane written by female authors in the nineteenth and first two decades of the twentieth century, which were previously debated in scholarship as unsuccessful due to their ‘failure’ endings of reductive capitulation to social integration (fates of heterosexual marriage and motherhood) or destruction of the autonomous self (fates of isolation, alcoholism, despair, illness, exile or, most commonly, death). I argue that the language of success and failure is too teleological and too narrow to effectively analyze the Female Bildungsroman given the heteropatriarchal constraints of society and literary genre, thus necessitating a revised assessment of how to dissect the growth of a heroine within novels from this period. Within this thesis, I propose a new theorization of the Bildungsroman based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that principally studies the ongoing pursuit of self-actualization, which the Bildungsroman heroine is questing towards. This theorization relies on decentering Bildungsroman study from an overreliance on conclusions, focussing on moments in the development sections of these novels of development that exemplify both the progress heroines fashion towards self-actualization and the radical acts of resistance performed by female authors as they dare to tell stories of self-actualizing heroines in a time when gender denied women the right to exist beyond the relational self.
I first investigate the development of the heroine in a pair of famous nineteenth novels, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and Kate Chopin’s The Awakening that have the success of their female Bildungsroman storyline highly debated. These novels serve as case studies for the paradigmatic ‘failure’ endings – Pride and Prejudice as reductive capitulation to social integration and The Awakening as destruction of the autonomous self – as I attempt to rehabilitate the growth exhibited by heroines within these unsuccessful endings of the female Bildungsroman. I then pivot into the twentieth century to examine how modernism permitted female authors to craft female Bildungsroman with successful endings, especially for women with marginalized female identities. Through applying my revised Bildungsroman theorization to case studies of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Lolly Willowes and Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, I illustrate how two different atypical middle-aged heroines, a queer spinster and an African American widow, grow significantly over the development portions of their novels to triumphantly conclude their stories as autonomous women in the continual pursuit of self-actualization. Consequently, in this project that spans 150 years of feminist literature, I intend to prioritize the growth, not the resolution, of a heroine’s story to rediscover inflexions of agency and progress within the Bildungsroman genre in a thesis that ultimately rehabilitates the progressive moves female authors construct within and beyond the limits of ‘failure’ endings, charting the course for the eventual arrival at the successful, Modernist Female Bildungsroman
Child\u27s Play: Revolution and Liberation in 21st Century Children\u27s Speculative Fiction
No full textThe media we consume sets our expectations for who we ought to be and what we ought to do, especially the books we read and shows we watch as children. Using The Hunger Games Trilogy (2008-2010), the dystopian young adult novels by Suzanne Collins and Avatar: The Last Airbender (2005-2008), the animated television series for children created by Bryan Koniezko and Michael Dante DiMartino, this thesis explores how and why contemporary American children\u27s speculative fiction makes children responsible for saving the world against impossible odds. It also examines how their protagonists\u27 more \u27childish\u27 qualities-play, humor, imagination, creativity, and joy-influence their development, and the development of their societies over the course of their stories.
Chapter 1 discusses The Hunger Games as well as its sequels and prequels. Using Paulo Freire\u27s theories ofliberation in Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), I argue that protagonist Katniss Everdeen fights in two kinds of revolutions against the authoritarian Capitol. One of them is unsuccessful, devoid of compassion, and merely reproduces the injustice of the dystopian world she already lived in, the kind that fashions war into a game and sacrifices its children to settle its differences. The other is a quieter kind of liberation, one which is genuine and helps her reconstruct her childhood, her relationships, and her sense of self. This liberation is fueled by different games, the kind she plays with her friends rather than against them: Freirean games. They sing songs, they make art, and they run in the meadow that sits atop the mass graves of their people. These games restore Katniss\u27s childhood, and they help her teach her own children about violence in a way that will make them braver.
Chapter 2 discusses Avatar, which takes place in a similarly violent and broken world, but infuses it with humor, with fun, and with life. I examine how the series depicts the plight of children in times of war and how children inherit the burdens of their ancestors. Whether they are parentified in the absence of role models, slated to inherit an evil monarchy, or the actual reincarnation of the most powerful figure in the setting, the pressures they face are intense. Yet instead of focusing only on the burdens children bear in times of war and genocide, Avatar renders the expectations placed on children as cartoonishly over-the-top and completely absurd: the show makes the audience laugh instead. This laughter, this play, when infused with the young character\u27s compassion, creativity, flexibility, and desire for freedom, becomes the ultimate weapon against the forces of empire.
This is a thesis about what I believe to be the radical power of friendship and the importance of the games we choose to play with one another. When we play the oppressor\u27s games, we only reproduce oppression, violence, and hatred: no one ever wins. The only way to break the cycle is to fight like children, and make up our own game
Toxins in the Nervous System The Effect of Water Lead Contamination on Learning and Memory
No full textNeurotoxins are substances that alter the structure and function of the central nervous system. Many of these substances exist within the environment, including lead, arsenic, mercury, and chromium. The most common neurotoxin existing within our environment is lead (Pb2+). When exposed to the body, the central nervous system can become heavily impacted, which is especially seen in individuals that are still in the process of development. Elevated levels of lead in the blood can lead to psychological effects and neurodegeneration. Psychiatric manifestations may include increased depression, anxiety and irritability. Chronic exposure can lead to decreased mental processing speed, fine and gross motor deficits, and overall decreased cognitive function. Evidence also suggests that individuals exposed to an impoverished environment may demonstrate increased adverse effects to Pb2+ exposure compared to those in an enriched environment. The present study highlights the effects of lead contamination on spatial learning and memory in rats and the effects of being exposed to an impoverished or enriched environment. Pups were exposed to 0.04% of lead acetate drinking water or tap water and randomly placed in an impoverished environment (single housed) or an enriched environment (group housing). Spatial learning and memory were measured through the use of the Barnes maze. It is hypothesized that pups exposed to lead acetate drinking water along with being housed in an impoverished environment will display significant cognitive deficits compared to those exposed to tap water. The results did not reveal a significant main effect between lead pups and control pups being exposed to an enriched environment or impoverished environment. Results showed a significant main effect regarding latency to escape for days 6-9, but none of the post hoc tests comparing the different groups revealed any significance
The Coevolution of the Six Ancient Kilns and Japanese Postwar Local Identity
Get PDFThe arts have long been tools used to prop up political visions, and Japan’s traditional crafts are no exception to this trend. Japanese ceramics in particular have enjoyed, or perhaps endured, era after era of patronage by successive governments and movements over their more than a millennium of history. Appropriated by a wave of nationalism in the Meiji period, the rokkoyō (six ancient kilns), long famous for their rustic style and acclaimed tea wares, were converted along with many other traditional crafts into symbols of the Japanese national spirit. In the postwar period, however, without necessarily losing their national importance, these traditional ceramics have built for themselves a new niche as symbols of local pride, with the help of a busy convergence of economic and community interests. This paper aims to uncover the process by which the tea-taste wares of the rokkoyō became symbols of local and prefectural identity in a postwar Japan often falsely characterized as culturally homogenous