University at Albany, State University of New York
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Evaluation of the Physicochemical Properties and Soil Biogeochemistry of Fire Residues
Get PDFWildland fire is a main driving force in the Earth system and affects ecosystem properties and processes across spatio-temporal scales. The burning of biomass and production of solid fire residues (conventionally termed fire ash) that are a mixture of completely and incompletely burned materials (inorganic ash and pyrogenic carbon), represent the direct and prominent changes by fires. Cycling of the fire residues is an integral component of elemental cycles and can mediate other biogeochemical processes.
This dissertation aims to fill important knowledge gaps in understanding the disturbance of wildland fires to biogeochemical processes in soils. First, this work characterized and compared the chemical speciation and aqueous dissolution behaviors of macronutrients in fire ash produced across different ecosystems, providing a fundamental dataset and knowledge for exploring the cycling of fire ash. Next, the effects of pyrogenic carbon on soil biogeochemical conditions and processes were explored, through studying its interaction with extracellular enzymes and enzyme substrates, as well as the effects on enzyme activities.
Main findings from this dissertational research include: 1) Variation in macronutrients speciation among wildfire ashes can be attributed to the vegetation composition and elemental stoichiometry of the biomass, as well as fire thermal conditions. This study provides a mechanistic understanding of how fires transform the chemistry of macronutrients and affect macronutrient returning to soils across different ecosystems, which is essential for evaluating the disturbance to ecosystem nutrient cycling by fires; 2) Adsorption of extracellular enzymes onto biochar surfaces is primarily driven by electrostatic interactions, and the extent of adsorption is affected by surface characteristics of the biochar, such as surface chemistry, pore structure, and functional groups; 3) Biochar can change the soil mobility and availability of organophosphates for enzymatic reactions through enzyme and enzyme substrates adsorption. 4) Biochar plays a significant role in modulating soil enzyme activity through direct enzyme and substrates adsorption. The adsorption of extracellular enzymes onto biochar varies with biochar type (feedstock and pyrolysis temperature), which directly influences the degradation of organic matter and nutrient cycling. This study also highlights the importance of proper measurement and interpretation of enzyme activity in systems containing biochar, as conventional enzyme assays may not fully account for biochar\u27s complex role in biochar-substrate-enzyme interactions.
In addition, the research synthesizes current knowledge on the microbial decomposition of biochar, linking soil microbial processes with biochemical transformations. It emphasizes the variations in biochar stability and microbial community responses, contributing to an improved understanding of biochar\u27s role in the global carbon cycle and its environmental stability.
In summary, this dissertation advances the understanding of the effects of fire residues on nutrients speciation and cycling, enzymes and enzymes substrates adsorption, and enzyme activity
Factors That Influence Clinicians\u27 Intention to Use a Trauma-Informed Approach to Care in Women\u27s Substance Use Disorder Treatment
Get PDFAims: Regardless of literature citing the effectiveness of trauma-informed care (TIC) (e.g., Capezza & Najavits, 2012; Covington, 2008; Morgan et al., 2020), implementation is lacking in settings that serve women with substance use disorders (SUD) (Bartholow & Huffman, 2023; Capezza & Najavits, 2012; Terplan et al., 2015). Not implementing TIC often results in methods that are trauma-inducing, may prevent the achievement desired outcomes, and lead to negative outcomes such as drop-out and relapse (Brown et al., 2013; Capezza & Najavits, 2012; Claus & Kindleberger, 2002; Hales et al., 2019; SAMHSA, 2014). This study aims to provide a theoretically driven empirical model that can measure and explain clinicians’ behavioral intentions surrounding the use of trauma-informed care in women’s substance use disorder treatment. This exploratory, quantitative, correlational, nonexperimental study seeks to determine which factors predict an intention to use a trauma-informed approach with women in SUD treatment. The Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB) is a psychological theory that explains how a person’s beliefs and intentions influence their behavior. The TPB posits that one’s attitude towards the behavior, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control influence behavioral intention. The researcher examined how well TPB predicts clinicians’ intention to use a trauma-informed approach to care. One goal of the research is to advance the understanding of what leads an SUD treatment provider to use a trauma-informed approach, which in turn may influence the development of additional training and policies that will increase the use of TIC in women’s SUD treatment (an empirically supported intervention). Methodology: The sample consisted of 490 current professional members/affiliates of The Association for Addiction Professionals (NAADAC), who responded to a recruitment email by completing an online survey through Qualtrics. The study used multiple linear regression to examine the relationships between TPB variables (IVs) and intention to use TIC (DV). An additional multiple linear regression model was used to determine which demographic variables were associated with clinicians’ intention to use TIC. Findings: The TPB was supported by the data. The TPB alone (not controlling for demographic influences) explained 69.1% of the variance in clinicians’ intention to use TIC in women’s SUD treatment. The final multiple linear regression model that included TPB variables and demographic controls explained 74.0% variance in clinicians’ intention to use TIC. Male clinicians and those who completed some college were significantly less likely to use TIC with women in SUD treatment. An individual’s perceived behavioral control was found to be the strongest predictor of intention in both models. Conclusions: The findings cast light on the multiple factors that impact a clinician’s use of TIC with women in SUD treatment. First, a clinician’s perspective about their control over, or ability to use the intervention in a given service setting significantly predicted whether they intended to use (or were already using) a trauma-informed approach to treatment. Second, the perceived social pressure to engage or not to engage in using TIC in one’s agency similarly predicted the use of TIC (revealing the power of an organization and colleagues to influence clinician behavior). Third, the degree to which using TIC is positively or negatively valued by the clinician (significantly) matters in terms of its use. Thus, model standardization for clinicians working with women who have SUDs, broader adoption of trauma-informed care education among women’s SUD treatment agencies, and providing more supportive work environments for the use of TIC may increase clinician’s intention to use TIC in these agencies. Due to the struggles women have endured regarding receiving appropriate treatment for SUD (e.g., criminalization, lack of beds, inappropriate treatment methods, etc.) it is necessary to take steps forward in meeting the needs of these women. Systematic implementation of TIC in women’s SUD treatment by clinicians, although only one piece of the puzzle, is necessary to ensure women have the best chance of recovery
The East Asian Fertility Crisis: Causes, Consequences, and Policy Responses
Get PDFThis research paper explores the perceived East Asian fertility crisis in China, Japan, and South Korea. This paper establishes the need for the specific case study of these three nation’s unique demographic crises that individually, uniquely challenge existing demographic theories. First, I provide information on relevant demographic theories. I trace the history of each country’s different perceived crises and key policy efforts that attempt to channel fertility behavior in socially desirable directions, thus illustrating that these historic antinatalist policies reflect a wider government strategy to affect reproductive choices of citizens towards national economic and political agendas. Regardless of the policies’ successes, implementation created unintended demographic, social, and economic consequences, which are still observed in the present fertility crisis. Then, I analyze a combination of recent government-instituted fertility policies and civil society-based movements to show that these countries have underlying cultural factors that contribute to the continued failure of pronatalist policies to raise fertility. Lastly, I present an argument for future culturally sensitive policies to combat declining fertility in China, Japan, and South Korea. I specifically name gender equality and female empowerment as a culturally-sensitive policy approach, and present evidence of this approach in Germany. Important terminology is defined in footnotes throughout the paper and information supplemental to the understanding of the fertility crisis is listed in the appendix
Stratifying the Social: The Race/Class Dialectic and the Fetishization of Race in Our Neoliberal Contemporary
Get PDFThis dissertation utilizes the lens of Social Reproduction Theory to examine the consequences of viewing race and racism and other systems of oppression like Patriarchy as separate or additive autonomous ontologies. Intersectionality Theory posits oppressions as independent systems that “add” or “intersect” onto oppressed subjects in particular circumstances. On the other hand, responding to Intersectionality Theory, Social Reproduction Theory understands systems of oppression as mutually constitutive social relations. Social Reproduction Theory therefore allows for a more thorough understanding of the relationship between racism and other systems of oppression and their own relationship to capitalism. Rather than theorizing these social relations as disconnected, a more accurate and fruitful understanding of them is as co-constitutive, mutually immanent systems that function dialectically in order to reproduce the capitalist totality. The project focuses on this issue in the neoliberal contemporary moment in the United States. Here I define neoliberalism as the political expression of capitalism from the 1970s to today. Neoliberalism has been marked by deregulation and privatization, as well as the assimilation of people of color into the power structures of our status quo. In terms of race and racism, this has meant the contradiction of racialized subjects upholding systemic racism while remaining targets and victims of racism, as well as the conception of a “post-racial era.” I argue that the decoupling of systems of oppression is a feature of neoliberalism, and I look specifically at the ramifications of the disarticulation of race and racism from these other constitutive oppressions in the neoliberal social totality. As Himani Bannerji argues, to separate these systems is to fetishize them in that it distances them from their social determinations and limits our analysis of them because they come to be viewed as entirely independent from one another. Doing so allows the social totality to reproduce and undermines our attempts to resist the exploitative capitalist system.
Hearkening back to Marx’s concept of the commodity fetish, Bannerji’s argument allows us to consider other ways to apply and think through fetishization and social determination and the alienation the fetish causes. I center the project around the question of fetishized race in three different literary genres and their relationship to major tenets of neoliberalism. Chapter 1 explores fetishization in its common usage as an obfuscation, arguing that in the context of the genre of street literature, in particular Sister Souljah’s two novels, The Coldest Winter Ever (1999) and its sequel, Life After Death (2021), to focus only on race and to disconnect it from its relation to class oppression is to occlude and hide class oppression. Class oppression in this context includes prisons and mass incarceration, and to obscure class in this context is to obscure mass incarceration. Chapter 2 focuses on satire through Paul Beatty’s The Sellout (2015) and Percival Everett’s Erasure (2001) and the ways in which fetishized race becomes subsumed into neoliberalism’s incessant need to monetize everything. I argue that fetishized race causes identity to become stamped with commodity logic. I also explore here the ways in which people of color advance to positions of power in ways that serve to uphold racism and contribute to its social reproduction. Through a reading of neo-slave narratives, in Chapter 3, I consider neoliberal temporality and its self-positioning as a perpetual present. My focus is on Ishmael Reed’s Flight to Canada (1976) and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad (2016). This chapter shows how a turn to the past in these texts is related to neoliberalism’s lack of a future. Here I also address a potential link between neoliberalism and Afro-pessimism. Chapter 3 ends with a reading of Zora Neale Hurston’s interview with the last living survivor of the Middle Passage, Barracoon (2018). In juxtaposing these texts and through this turn to the past, I posit a potential alternate future. The dissertation concludes with a reflection on these consequences of fetishizing race and the effects of delinking systems of oppression for our attempts at resisting the capitalist social totality. I address these consequences through a consideration of the current political stakes of the argument with the looming 2024 United States presidential election
Removal of PFOA/PFOS in Water Using Electrocoagulation and Associated Life Cycle Impacts and Financial Costs
Get PDFElectrocoagulation (EC) with a zinc anode demonstrated promising results to remove perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) from an aqueous solution. However, the energy requirement for EC is usually very high due to water electrolysis or aeration. The second chapter of this dissertation aims to reduce energy consumption using an air-cathode in EC (ACEC) to supply oxygen electron acceptor without aeration for attenuating PFOA/PFOS in this new configuration. For the high PFOA concentration (0.25 mM), ACEC with 45 min of the reaction time exhibited an excellent PFOA removal (99.8 ± 0.3% removal) comparable to an EC with aeration (EC-aeration, 100% removal) while achieving much less energy consumption (0.14 kWh/m3). For the low PFOA concentration (0.1μM), only 41.1 ± 11.6% was removed by the ACEC due to the low concentration gradient for adsorption. EC- aeration achieved higher PFOA removal (81.9 ± 15.1%) for the low PFOA concentration, possibly because air bubbles floated PFOA to the water surface, thereby concentrating PFOA. The PFOS removals in the ACEC and EC-aeration (76.4–88.5%) at the high concentration (0.25 mM) were lower than PFOA due tentatively to its micelle formation. However, PFOS was removed better than PFOA at the low concentration (0.1μM) due to its higher hydrophobicity.
Besides hydrophobic interactions between PFOA/PFOS and zinc hydroxide flocs, aeration is another crucial factor determining PFOA/PFOS removal in EC. The third chapter of this dissertation examined how aeration (in terms of bubble sizes and flow rates) could impact PFOA/PFOS removal in EC. Both bubble sizes (coarse vs. fine) and airflow rates (7.9, 9.4, and 11.0 mL/sec) were critical for PFOA removal and zinc hydroxide floc generation. EC aerated with fine bubbles had 14-21% higher PFOA removal efficiency than EC aerated with coarse bubbles. PFOA removal by EC with a high airflow (11.0 mL/sec) was 19% higher than EC with a medium airflow (9.4 mL/sec), or 31-37% higher than EC with a low airflow (7.9 mL/sec). These results indicate that fine bubbles and high airflow rates are more beneficial for PFOA removal, likely due to a greater air-water contact area and turbulence. The EC with coarse bubbles produced zinc hydroxide flocs with 29-34% greater Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) surface area and 18% greater mass. However, the BET surface area and mass of the flocs were not critical for PFOA removal. The impacts of aeration on PFOS removal in EC were not significant.
The fourth chapter of this dissertation evaluates the life cycle environmental impacts and financial costs of PFOA and PFOS removal through EC. Zinc electrode consumption emerges as the primary contributor, accounting for 42% to 97% of both life cycle impacts and financial costs. Compared to granular activated carbon (GAC)-based PFAS removal, EC shows 99.6% lower fossil fuel depletion at mg/L initial PFOA/PFOS concentrations, but a 4.3-fold increase in fossil fuel depletion at μg/L levels. The life cycle impacts and costs of EC remain relatively consistent across varying PFOA/PFOS concentrations; even with a 5000-fold difference in initial concentrations, the fluctuations in fossil fuel depletion and financial costs do not exceed 70%
Latin American Homicide (Chapter 3)
Get PDFThe urgency for studying Latin America and the Caribbean(LAC) emanates from violence rates that are remarkably higher than in most world regions. Global homicide rates have recently declined (Rogers & Pridemore, 2018; Tuttle et al., 2018). While LAC followed suit, its rates are still comparatively high, and it is home to less than 10% of the global population but about one-third of homicides. The World Health Organization defines violence as endemic if a nation reaches ten homicides per 100,000 residents. Over two-thirds of LAC, nations meet this threshold (World Health Organization, 2023), and the regional mean is above 10. The Pan American Health Organization deemed LAC violence the social pandemic of the century in the Americas (Imbush, 2011). Of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world – as measured by homicide rates – 42 are in LAC (Igarapé, 2023). Although not experiencing civil war, homicide rates in Brazil, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico are at or above nations with active conflicts (Feldmann & Luna, 2022). Beyond the harm to individuals, families, and communities, the Inter-American Development Bank reported that crime and violence in the region cost a quarter trillion dollars annually, or 3.5% of the region\u27s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) (Jaitman et al., 2017)
Phantasma
Get PDFThis project, titled Phantasma, can be described as a queer retelling of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, in which Brutus is the central focus. It will interrogate the question of what draws readers back to that fateful day at the Roman Senate time and time again. It will also question what drew Shakespeare and his audience to it, as well as deconstruct the nuances of his recreation. The narrative will be greatly influenced by the structure of Shakespeare’s play, but will take on new forms as scenes are added in places where Brutus would ordinarily be “offstage”. Using queer theory as well as a balance between Renaissance cultural studies and Roman historical accounts, the story will be a combination of Shakespeare’s interpretation of the story of Julius Caesar (and of Brutus), as well as the reality of what Roman civilization was like for the living, breathing figures that took action on that Ides of March. The narrative form will allow me to interrogate the dynamics of gender and sexuality that functioned between Caesar, Cassius, and Brutus
School Choice: An Analysis of State and Federal Level Data and Conversations
Get PDFIn this paper, I will attempt to answer two questions: 1) why has school choice legislation been successfully passed at the state level, but not the federal level; and 2) have the school choice programs implemented at the state level been successful? To answer the first, I will conduct a political analysis of state governments and our current federal government. To answer the second, I will analyze two different school choice programs (Florida’s and Wisconsin’s) and consider success based on academic achievement, standardized test scores, level of competition in area public schools, enrollment in 2 and 4 year colleges and universities and the rate of graduation from these institutions. I will then compare these metrics to the metrics of public schools in the area to see if school choice is actually achieving the outcomes it sets out to achieve and allowing students, especially disadvantaged students, to attain better educations. I predict that the answer to the first question is simply that there are higher levels of partisanship at the federal level, meaning opposing parties are less willing to work together to pass policy and more likely to find a reason, any reason really, to oppose policy proposed by the opposing party. I predict that school choice programs will provide successful outcomes at the state level once properly analyzed and that the programs will prove to positively impact students, including disadvantaged and low-income students
Confessions in the Salem Witch Trials
Get PDFAs defined as one of the darkest moments in American history, the Salem Witch Trials serves as a haunting reminder of the human capacity of fear and manipulation over a community of people that led to mass hysteria and injustice. Through the mist of mass hysteria and chaos, the Court of Oyer and Terminer was established to maintain social control of the community and prosecute the accused through coerced confessions. Over a hundred and fifty people were accused of witchery and over one-third of the accused confessed to the crime. This paper dives into a deep analysis of primary and secondary sources to discuss the use of confessions within the Salem Witch Trials. Looking into the tactics used to gain forced confessions from the accused, the role the institution of slavery had on the use of confessions of evidence within the trials, and the extreme methods of punishment the court conducted against the accused who refused to confess to being a witch, provides a remarkable understanding of how confessions initiated the continuation of the trials so the court could have social control over the Salem community. This thesis will argue that the Court of Oyer and Terminer used confessions as a tactic to take social control over the community by using the fear of the devil to establish a continuous loop of confessions for future legal proceedings. The accused out of fear of their fate if they did not submit an admission of guilt, confessed to stay alive. For the enslaved women accused of witchcraft, each woman took care in answering the magistrate’s questions in the right way to help them make it through the trials alive and keep them free from being sentenced to the gallows. To maintain social control of the community, the Court of Oyer and Terminer took extreme measures against those who would not confess, killing or punishing any of the accused who defied the court
Updating Nuclear Recoil Models in the Noble Element Simulation Technique for the LUX-ZEPLIN Experiment
Get PDFThere is a substantial amount of evidence that a majority of the mass in the universe is comprised of a non-luminous substance, given the name dark matter. Many candidates have been theorized as the solution to the dark matter mystery, with the Weakly Interacting Massive Particle (WIMP) being a favorable candidate. WIMPs may be detectable via interactions with nucleons, a method known as direct detection. The LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment is a xenon-based dual-phase Time Projection Chamber (TPC), that specializes in searching for WIMP-nucleon interactions. TPCs are used to reconstruct event information using scintillation and ionization, which are products of interactions within. Though no WIMP signals have been detected thus far, LZ set world-leading limits on WIMP-nucleon interactions in 2022.
The Noble Element Simulation Technique (NEST) is a simulation package used to predict and reproduce signal yields in noble elements for energy deposits at various electric fields. In particular, NEST uses semi-empirical models based on real-world data to accurately reproduce yields, detector effects, and more. This thesis focuses on two nuclear recoil models within NEST, the total quanta model and the deuterium-deuterium (DD) energy spectrum model. While these models have worked well to predict signal yields, they are updated in this thesis to reflect more recent work at the time of this thesis