6617 research outputs found
Sort by
Effectiveness of Different Materials as Catalysts for Alkaline Water Electrolysis
Get PDFWe tested the catalytic properties of various nickel and molybdenum electrodes as potential replacements for platinum for usage in alkaline water electrolysis. After initial tests found molybdenum-based electrodes to be significantly more effective than nickel electrodes, we moved to calculate overpotentials. We found nickel electrode overpotentials at ± 10 mA current to be 939 and -960 mV. Conversely, molybdenum electrode overpotentials at the same currents were 244 and -681 mV respectively. While still significantly higher than overpotentials for platinum, these results indicate that, with more testing, molybdenum-based electrodes could eventually emerge as a cheaper, more abundant alternative to platinum electrodes
The Dangers of Deceit: An Analysis of Odysseus’ Lie to Laertes in the Odyssey Book 24
Get PDFAlthough many scholars claim that the general function of lying in the Odyssey is to establish oneself as intellectually superior, this assertion fails to recognize the ethical lessons presented through situations with deception. In this paper, I analyze cases of Odysseus’ deceit in the Odyssey and compare these to his lie to Laertes in Book 24 to demonstrate the potential moral dangers associated with lying. Through analysis of the situational context of the lies, the content presented in each lie, and the consequences of the deceit, I argue that the lie to Laertes can be used as evidence that lying in the Odyssey does hold moral implications in addition to practical advantages. I take issue with scholars proposing that the function of lying in the Odyssey relates to one’s social prowess and does not communicate any ethical opinions about deceit. By analyzing Odysseus’ lie to Laertes in comparison to his previous lies, I illustrate that lying in the Odyssey can in fact hold moral implications, and that this lie specifically serves as a cautionary tale regarding the dangers of lying to vulnerable audiences
New Americans and the New Right: Hispanic Voting Trends in the Trump Era of Politics
Get PDFIn 2020, Donald Trump lost re-election to Joe Biden by around 4.5% nationally. Despite losing in his re-election bid, Trump was able to make surprising inroads with Hispanic voters, reaching the highest Republican totals with Hispanic voters in decades. This trend held true across nearly every Hispanic neighborhood in the country. From large Hispanic-majority cities such as Miami to isolated pockets of Hispanic voters in New England, there was a consistent rightward trend. Moreover, this trend largely continued into 2022, with most Republican candidates in the midterm elections matching Trump’s numbers. This paper will take an in depth look at two case studies, Miami-Dade County and the Rio Grande Valley, to explore how national trends and local politics interact. Through this method, I seek to draw conclusions about some of the potential factors that may be contributing to Hispanic conservatism
Teaching the American Dream: How U.S. Refugee Resettlement Responsibilizes Refugees
Get PDFMy project, grounded in three months’ work and research with Jewish Resettlement Services (JRS), shows how US resettlement responsibilizes refugees through policies that teach independence and self-sufficiency while demonizing dependency. Yet, as I illustrate, refugees often want to be dependent on JRS. I combine ethnographic insights and discursive analysis to elucidate the contrasting ways in which JRS workers and refugees frame “successful” resettlement. I apply an anti-oppressive lens to show how US resettlement produces “responsible” citizens while evading its own responsibilities to properly support people whom the US has had a major role in displacing. I propose a new framework for resettlement, rooted in solidarity with refugees and in social justice
The Effect of the China Shock on the 2016 and 2020 US Presidential Elections
Get PDFTrade liberalization in 2000 opened up the door for increased trade between China and the US, favoring Chinese manufacturers. This period is often referred to as the China shock (Autor, 2013). This paper utilizes data collected from the MIT election lab, FRED, and David Dorn\u27s published data to investigate the effect of the China import shock in the early 2000s on the most recent two US presidential elections. Our analysis, which employs commuting zone-level data, reveals that regions more adversely affected by the China shock were more likely to vote for the Republican Party, while regions that suffered less harm were more likely to vote for the Democratic Party. This research sheds light on the future trade and domestic policies aimed at protecting against economic downturns due to international trade. For instance, policymakers should consider the establishment of assistance and support programs for workers displaced by trade liberalization, such as the Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) Program, Unemployment Insurance (UI), and other retraining and compensation policies(Autor et al., 2021). Such policies may influence voters\u27 choices in future elections
Music On Canvas: A Quest to Generate Art That Evokes the Feeling of Music
Get PDFAlthough the idea of connecting music and art dates back to ancient Greece, recent advancements in computing have made automating this feasible. This project represents a quest to transform music into art, using three methodologies where each is an improvement towards generating images that convey our feelings and imaginations during music listening. The three methods respectively involve:
1. An element-wise mapping of sound and colors2. Using song tags3. Tuning an Artificial Intelligence (AI) model to generate pictorial text captions.
To create artistic images, methods two and three utilize an existing text-to-image generative AI
Activist Lab
No full textVisit Site: Activist Lab
Students in my new Protest Hacking seminar designed a website to serve as a resource for activists. It condensed and translated emerging social science on effective activism for a general audience. This gave students the opportunity to learn the scientific method, study protests from across history and geographic contexts, and engage with communities. The semester also served as a chance for me to incubate a book project, now published with Beacon Press, called The New Science of Social Change: A Modern Handbook for Activists.https://digitalcommons.macalester.edu/dla_projects/1000/thumbnail.jp
A High-Speed Portable Ground Heat Exchanger Model for Use in Various Energy Simulation Software
Get PDFA portable component model (PCM) of a ground source heat pump system was developed and used as a test case in the creating of a PCM development framework. By developing this framework, new building energy simulation models will be able to be easily integrated into existing simulation software such as EnergyPlus and the Modelica Buildings Library. Our model uses a time responsive g-function and numerical methods to simulate ground source heat pumps for single time steps as well as long time scales. We validated our model against GHESim and GLHEPro and found that our model agrees with these two standards within acceptable ranges of error. This allows for development of the PCM framework to have a functional test case for trouble shooting errors during the development process. Future work on this model to include non-uniform time steps would allow it to be used independent on other software as a standalone system
Photometric Analysis of the Stellar Populations of 82 Low-Mass, Low-Metallicity Galaxies using the Spitzer Space Telescope
No full textWe present stellar mass values for the 82 galaxies in SHIELD (the Survey of HI in Extremely Low-mass Dwarfs), which is a comprehensive study of the physical properties of extremely low-mass, low-metallicity galaxies (M_HI \u3c 10^7 M⊙ from the ALFALFA Survey). These values were derived using aperture photometry on images taken by the Spitzer Space Telescope at 3.6 μm and by assuming a fixed mass-to-light ratio (specifically, M/L = 0.5). The Spitzer data was analyzed in tandem with optical data from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), and the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey to better distinguish and excise non-galaxy contaminants. Due to the irregular morphologies, low signal-to-noise ratios (SNR), and the presence of foreground and background contaminants for some of these galaxies, additional corrections were applied including point source extraction of bright foreground stars. In combination with 21-cm line derived HI masses, the stellar mass values allow us to derive the baryonic masses and gas fractions. These values can provide a better understanding of fundamental scaling relations such as the Baryonic Tully-Fisher Relation (BTFR) and also provide insights into fundamental galaxy properties. The stellar mass values span the range between 10^5.87 M⊙ ≤ M⋆ ≤ 10^8.05 M⊙ with a decreasing gas fraction as stellar mass increases
SHIELD Galaxies With Offset Neutral Gas Distributions
No full textIn an effort to improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, we study how stellar evolution in the form of feedback affects dwarf galaxies. Our galaxy sample consists of the 82 galaxies in the Survey of HI in Extremely Low-mass Dwarfs (SHIELD) program. These galaxies were selected from the Arecibo Legacy Fast ALFA (ALFALFA) survey, an unbiased extragalactic neutral hydrogen (HI) survey. The motivation for this project is to make progress in understanding the life cycle of galaxies, to catch strong feedback in action, and to investigate the frequency of these events. Our goal is to identify and study dwarf galaxies that show an offset between their gaseous and stellar distributions. We evaluate the overlap of total intensity HI maps, which come from observations made with the Very Large Array (VLA), onto infrared and optical images, which come from observations made with the Spitzer Space Telescope and the DESI Legacy Imaging Survey respectively, to quantitatively and qualitatively characterize this offset. We have classified 11 galaxies out of the sample of 82 as “offset”, all displaying a visible physical separation between the center of the HI distribution and the stellar distribution as well as additional characteristics indicative of disturbed gas. Seven additional galaxies were classified as “possibly offset” due to gas which is shown to be disturbed, but not necessarily offset from the stellar component. An environmental analysis of the galaxies using ALFALFA and SDSS survey data shows that some of the galaxies identified as offset or possibly offset were also identified as isolated, indicating that an internal mechanism, such as feedback, may cause the HI gas to be offset rather than an external mechanism. Additionally, the relative lack of Hα from star formation indicates recent (and possibly temporary) quenching of star formation