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Analysis of Abortion Policy Throughout the Globe
Get PDFThe Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization United States Supreme Court decision held that the Constitution does not guarantee the right to abortion, overturning the Roe v. Wade decision that had protected that right for decades. This landmark decision brought the topic of reproductive rights into the national spotlight, as many states took the opportunity to introduce restrictions on abortion that were previously disallowed by Roe. The regression of abortion rights in the United States makes it a global outlier, as many countries across the world have liberalized their laws on abortion in recent decades. These countries have taken measures such as decriminalizing the practice, increasing the number of circumstances where abortion is allowed, and improving accessibility to abortion. This paper seeks to thoroughly analyze and discuss current abortion policy and level of accessibility across the world, and why there is still variance on that policy in different regions. Through this analysis, this paper argues that there are a number of factors contributing towards the global trend of liberalization including on the ground activism, legal challenges to anti-abortion laws, and institutional support from a variety of organizations. The goal of this paper is to reach a better understanding of the dynamics of abortion policy, and to be an educational resource for those actively fighting for reproductive rights
The Use of Preprints in Doctorate Programs: A Citation Analysis Study of Trends in Chemistry and Physics Dissertations
No full textPreprint articles are available on servers, such as arXiv and ChemRxiv, at no-cost to benefit the movement toward open access of research. However, the use of preprint research articles as a reference source in academia is not heavily documented. To examine if researchers are utilizing preprint articles, this paper examines citation trends in the dissertations of chemistry and physics PhD candidates who studied at four University Centers in the State University Of New York system (SUNY). Using citation analysis methodology, references cited in PhD dissertations published between 2018–2021 were analyzed. Key findings showed that PhD candidate authors cited preprint articles at a low rate, and relied on traditional resources for their dissertations, such as articles and books. Physics preprints were cited with more frequency than chemistry preprints. This data provides a benchmark for tracking the use of physics and chemistry preprints in academic research. The results of this study are also useful for examining library collections, particularly around core journal titles. Additionally, this paper raises questions about the information literacy skills of doctoral students. The doctoral students’ best practices of using preprints could be explored in future research
An Exploratory Study of Research Contexts for Information Literacy Instruction
Get PDFIn a previous study, the author argued that information literacy instruction which takes into account the contextual nature of research is more meaningful to students and has more potential for long term impact than instruction that focuses narrowly on academic research skills. As part of that argument, the author identified six types of research that represented the contextual nature of research—academic, creative, personal, professional, scholarly, and scientific. This list of research types has since proven useful in the classroom. However, it is still an open question whether this framework is a useful way of thinking about research. The author set out to answer these questions by examining studies of information behavior published in core library and information science journals. The results were generally positive and provided further insight into the more specific types of research that may fit into these broader categories
Analyzing the Correlation between Surface Elevation and Seasonal and Diurnal Surface Temperature Cycles on Mars
Get PDFRecent technologies such as the Mars Climate Sounder, the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter, and the Curiosity rover have allowed scientists to examine Mars’ surface, climate, and atmospheric dynamics. Surface temperature data from the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) were collected and seasonal and diurnal cycles were extracted via Fourier regression analysis into a 1° latitude longitude grid. Diurnal cycles were shown to move from west to east across the surface throughout the day, while seasonal cycles moved from north to south. Two key diurnal portions, one in the early morning, and another in the late afternoon, were chosen due to their nearly complete seasonal and diurnal cycles of surface temperatures across the full global grid.
Surface topography data from the Mars Orbiter Laser Altimeter (MOLA) were collected within a 1° latitude by longitude grid. These data were aligned with seasonal and diurnal surface temperature cycles of the Mars Climate Sounder in order to examine the effects of topography on surface temperature, using the Laplacian and the zonal and meridional gradients of land surface elevation. Residual temperature anomaly data, after removing the part of the temperature linearly associated with elevation from the Mars Climate Sounder surface temperature seasonal cycles, were used to examine mean associations between surface temperature anomalies and various aspects of topography without direct elevational influences on temperature convoluting the data. Finally, air temperature measurements from the Curiosity Rover were collected and also underwent seasonal and diurnal cycle analysis via Fourier regression and demonstrate that the surface temperature data collection and seasonal and diurnal cycle analysis of the Mars Climate Sounder may be an accurate analog to on-ground measurements.
Results show that there are reversing trends of correlation between surface temperature and elevation during the night and day, with daytime experiencing an increase in temperature per increase in elevation and nighttime experiencing a decrease in temperature per increase in elevation. The zonal gradient of surface elevation often demonstrated that a westward facing slope has a higher temperature advantage than an eastward facing one if at the same elevation (resulting from consideration of temperature only during the late afternoon or early morning hours). In terms of the meridional gradient of surface elevation, results show that slopes that face northward will generally have a heating advantage over a southward facing slope at identical elevation, assessed at locations from the northern subtropics southward. Finally, the Laplacian of surface elevation showed generally that mountains will experiences higher temperatures, and craters will experience cooler ones, if at the same elevation. Non-topographical influences such as surface albedo possibly skewed the results in some contexts. Studying Mars’ surface, climate, and atmospheric dynamics are essential for understanding the planet as well as determining if life was once present and if it can be sustained in the future
Stable Oxygen Isotope Variability as a Proxy for Large-Scale Dynamics of the South American Summer Monsoon
Get PDFTerrestrial archives of oxygen isotope records are particularly important for the study of South American hydrology, where hydroclimate observations over the historical period are sparse and often not long enough to characterize multidecadal to centennial-scale changes. Knowledge of such low-frequency changes is critically important for interpreting and constraining projections of future change and detecting the emergence of forced change beyond the envelope of natural variability. This dissertation focuses on the past, present, and future of South American tropical and subtropical climate, with an emphasis on the mature phase of the monsoon season (December, January, and February; DJF) using oxygen isotopes in precipitation to interpret variability and change in the water cycle and climate, or hydroclimate. By utilizing an extensive network of diverse terrestrial archives of oxygen isotopes (such as cave records, lake records, ice core records, and tree ring cellulose records), observational networks, and isotope-enabled global climate models, a multi-data synthesis was achieved, which maximizes the strengths of these diverse data sources. Through this oxygen-isotope lens, regional hydroclimate responses to changes in internal variability of the climate system and external forcing influences, such as anthropogenic change, have been documented.
Chapter 2 characterizes regionally coherent modes of South American Summer Monsoon (SASM) variability over the Last Millennium (850 – 1850 Common Era (CE)) using paleoclimate records and isotope-enabled climate models. Two modes were defined as indices for monsoon strength and South Atlantic Convergence Zone activity, respectively. These indices are useful as temporally complete descriptions of regional climate variability against which discrete paleoclimate records can be compared. Additionally, this work utilized fully coupled, isotope-enabled climate models run as single-forcing experiments to investigate the influence of external forcing to highlight regionally coherent, multi-centennial departures from the mean climatological state during the Last Millennium. This chapter was published in Orrison et al. (2022) in the journal Climate of the Past.
Chapter 3 characterizes the spatiotemporal footprints of the Pacific low- (multidecadal) and high-frequency (interannual) variability within terrestrial archives (proxy records), observations, and model simulations of oxygen isotopes in precipitation and water vapor during the past 120 years (1880 – 2000 CE). Utilizing an atmosphere-only climate model forced with observed sea surface temperatures highlights the Walker circulation response linking Pacific sea surface temperature anomalies with the stable oxygen isotope response of the water cycle over South America. This chapter is in revision for publication in the Journal of Geophysical Research - Atmospheres.
Chapter 4 isolates the novel connection found between oxygen isotope signals identified in the hydrologic cycle over South America and a regionally defined index of the South American Hadley circulation during the mature phase of the SASM (DJF). This work finds that the trends of weakening and expansion that characterize the regional Hadley circulation over the course of the 20th and 21st century are coupled to the enrichment in heavy isotopes in terrestrial archives of precipitation. This work utilizes a fully-coupled isotope-enabled climate model with transient simulations to examine this relationship in the historic period (1920 – 2009) and into the future (2010 – 2098 CE), thereby establishing a long-term historical context for projected future monsoon weakening based on a stable oxygen isotope framework. This chapter is in preparation for submission to the journal Geophysical Research Letters
The Changing Priorities of the U.S. Empire and the Fate of Puerto Rico
No full textPuerto Rico’s fate is captive to the changing priorities of the United States. In this essay I will explore how changes in U.S. colonial administration of Puerto Rico appear to closely correspond to changing U.S. national security concerns and geopolitical priorities
A Combinatorial Model for Affine Demazure Crystals of Levels Zero and One
Get PDFThe symmetric and non-symmetric Macdonald polynomials are special families of orthogonal polynomials with parameters q and t. They are indexed by dominant, (resp. arbitrary) weights associated to a root system and generalize several well-known polynomials such as the Schur polynomials, Jack polynomials, Hall-Littlewood polynomials, etc. There are two well-known combinatorial models for computing these polynomials: a tableau model in type A, due to Haglund, Haiman and Loehr, and a type-independent model due to Ram and Yip, based on alcove walks.
Crystals bases are an important construction encoding information about Lie algebra representations. It turns out that there is an interesting connection between crystals and Macdonald polynomials. Certain affine crystals, known as Kirillov-Reshetikhin (KR) crystals, were realized in a uniform way (for all untwisted affine types) in terms of the quantum alcove model. Their graded characters were shown to coincide with the special- ization of symmetric Macdonald polynomials at t = 0. There are analogous results that the non-symmetric Macdonald polynomials at t = 0 coincide with the graded character of Demazure-type subcrystals of tensor products of single-column KR crystals. As discussed in the mentioned paper, the former can be thought of as a Demazure submodule of a certain quotient of a level zero extremal weight module. The corresponding crystal is called a DARK crystal (Kirillov-Reshetikhin Affine Demazure). Thus, we expect a combinatorial model for the mentioned DARK crystal based on the alcove walks in the non-symmetric Ram-Yip formula specialized at t = 0. This is the first main result of the paper, and is based on a “non-symmetric version” of the quantum alcove model.
On another hand, in type A, non-symmetric Macdonald polynomials at t = 0 are expressed in terms of semistandard key tabloids. These objects were given an affine crystal structure, which was shown to realize the crystals of certain level one Demazure modules for the affine Lie algebra of sln. The second main result of our paper is the construction of an affine crystal isomorphism between the non-symmetric quantum alcove model in type A and the corresponding semistandard key tabloid model
Development and Initial Validation of the Supervisor Responsiveness Scale
Get PDFTheoretically, responsiveness to the emergent needs of supervisees and clients is the primary means by which clinical supervisors help trainees become effective psychotherapists (Friedlander, 2012). To advance understanding and research on this aspect of supervision, the Supervisory Responsiveness Scale (SRS) was developed and assessed psychometrically.
First, 35 items reflecting trainees’ perceptions of their supervisor’s responsiveness, as defined by Friedlander (2012), were developed and rated for clarity, face and content validity by a panel of 12 experienced supervisors. After the item pool was refined based on these ratings, 216 supervisees representing all training levels rated each item on a 1 (not at all) to 5 (totally) scale. A series of confirmatory factor analyses indicated the best fit to be a one-factor solution with 23 positively and negatively-worded items.
After reverse scoring the negatively-worded items and summing the raw scores, high SRS scores indicate greater supervisory responsiveness as perceived by supervisees. Based on the development sample, the measure’s internal consistency reliability was 0.98. Construct validity was supported by (a) significant positive correlations with measures of attractive, interpersonally sensitive, and task-oriented supervisory styles (Friedlander & Ward, 1984), rs = 0.77, 0.88 and 0.66, respectively, the supervisory working alliance (Bahrick, 1989; r = 0.92), and satisfaction with supervision (Ladany et al., 1996; r = 0.91); (b) significant negative correlations with measures of role conflict (r = -0.75) and ambiguity (r = -0.80) in the supervisory relationship (Olk & Friedlander, 1992); and (c) a non-significant correlation with a measure of socially desirable reporting (r = 0.12).
The exceptionally high correlations between the SRS and measures of the alliance and supervisee satisfaction suggested a large overlap with these other constructs, which also reflect trainees’ perceptions of “good supervision.” In contrast to these other measures, however, the SRS assesses the “if/then,” contextual aspect of the supervisory process, that is, if a particular event or concern is described by the supervisee, then the supervisor responds to it adequately. Also in contrast to these other measures of supervision, the SRS reflects supervisors’ responses to the needs of their supervisee’s client(s) as well as those of the supervisee
Chemical Reduction of Curved Molecular Nanographenes: Metal Intercalation and Core Transformation
Get PDFThe promising lithium storage capacity and fast charge transport rate make graphene a great candidate for energy storage applications. However, the harsh synthetic conditions lead to uneven size distribution and poor solubility, posing limitations on further applications and modifications of graphene and its derivatives. Molecular nanographenes, as graphene cutouts, possess outstanding chemical and physical properties stemming from their parent graphene but also demonstrate such unique features as controllable synthetic conditions, defined molecular structures, uniform size, and relatively good solubility. The improved solubility enables the use of solution chemistry methods for design modifications of molecular nanographenes and for systematical investigation of their electron transfer processes. To understand the charge transfer and electron distribution of molecular nanographenes as potential anode materials, their redox properties have to be disclosed. However, the most common assessment, electrochemical reduction, is highly dependent on the measurement conditions, generally underestimating the charge accepting ability of nanographenes.
In our laboratory, the chemical reduction with alkali metals has been broadly utilized to unravel redox properties of molecular nanocarbons, revealing their reduction limits, alkali metal binding trends, product stability and reactivity, as well solid-state packing and supramolecular assembly. In this work, we continued this investigation and focused on exploring the chemical reduction behavior of topologically different molecular nanographenes with negative and positive types of curvature. We aimed at comprehensive studies of structural and electronic responses of selected nanographenes to multi-electron addition.
In Chapter 2, we systematically investigated for the first time the chemical reduction behavior of a series of cyclooctatetraene (COT) derivatives with gradually expanded π-surfaces and different core conjugation/functionalization. We revealed that the central COT core in dibenzo[a,e]cyclooctatetraene (DBCOT) follows the same tub-to-planar conversion upon two-fold reduction as the parent COT; however, the fused benzene rings offer additional binding sites and enrich metal coordination chemistry of the doubly-reduced DBCOT. The two-fold reduction of π-expanded tetrabenzo[a,c,e,g]cyclooctatetraene (TBCOT) and its highly flexible derivative, octaphenyltetrabenzo[a,c,e,g]cyclooctatetraene (OPTBCOT), reveals a reversible core rearrangement accompanied by the formation of a new C–C bond and conversion of the COT ring to two fused five-membered rings. Remarkably, in contrast to DBCOT and TBCOT serving as two-electron acceptors, OPTBCOT can uptake four electrons to afford the tetra-reduced product with a contorted eight-membered core and unique alkali metal intercalation pattern. Lastly, a fully conjugated COT derivative, octabenzo[8]circulene (OB8C), exhibits exceptional multi-electron accepting properties and can undergo up to six-fold reduction reversibly. Importantly, its polymerized form POB8C functions as an anode material in lithium-ion batteries, demonstrating a maximum discharge capacity better than the theoretical value of graphene.
In Chapter 3, the chemical reduction of two pyracylene nanographene hybrids has been investigated with alkali metals for the first time. Particularly, the chemical reduction of an asymmetric pyracylene hybrid (TPP), fused by one hexa-peri-hexabenzocoronene (HBC) unit and one hexaphenylbenzene (HPB) fragment, showed the core flexibility and the charge-dependent curvature changes, enabling its potential application as a molecular switch. In contrast, the symmetrical pyracylene hybrid (HPH) with two fused HBC units exhibits advanced electron accepting properties and can reversibly uptake up to six electrons, as clearly demonstrated by stepwise UV-vis absorption changes. Moreover, the diamagnetic products are all detected by 1H NMR spectroscopy, while the paramagnetic radical products are characterized with EPR spectroscopy. The stepwise reduced products were isolated as single crystalline materials and provided experimental evidence for a remarkable core conformational change. Specifically, the outcomes of one- and two-electron acquisition include the curvature reduction of HPH and better π-conjugation over its curved carbon backbone. In contrast, the higher reduction to the tetra- and penta-reduced states leads to a significant geometry change of the HPH core from the boat conformation to a recliner-chair shaped structure.
In summary, we demonstrated the outstanding redox properties of selected molecular nanographenes with different shapes and curvatures. The resulting products were isolated as single crystalline materials and fully characterized with X-ray crystallographic and spectroscopic tools. This revealed unique structural and geometrical rearrangement pathways for both COT and pyracylene derivatives, along with the exceptional alkali metal binding patterns that are framework- and charge-dependent. DFT calculations offered in-depth investigation of both charge acquisition and core deformation processes. The observed multi-electron uptake and fully reversible structural rearrangement facilitate the development of practical applications of novel molecular nanographenes for charge transfer and energy storage
