Mountain Scholar (Digital Collections of Colorado and Wyoming)
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A more-than-human life: rethinking the good life
Full text link2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.Recently, within disabled discourses, there have been conversations surrounding who is considered worthy of participating in society and who is not. Additionally, those conversations have included how exhausting it can be to fight for the ability to participate in society. Lauren Berlant's concept of the good life acts as a way to understand why this feeling of exhaustion emerges in these conversations. However, it may not account for all ways of being and participating in the world. Therefore, in this thesis, I examine how a posthuman lens can help us rethink not only the broader normative ways of living a good life, but also the concept of the good life. I do this through a critical discourse analysis (CDA) of the subreddit r/disability. Additionally, I examine if the discourse of the subreddit employs good life ideals or if cripistemologies emerge in the discourse. In analyzing the subreddit, I find that that while some of the conversations reflects good life ideals and normative ways of being, other conversations challenge normative ways of being and express alternate ways of being in the world. These alternate ways of being align with the posthuman lens I employ in this thesis and allow for ways of rethinking the good life through proposing pluralistic, interdependent ways of being in the world. From the findings of this CDA of r/disability, I aim to bring attention to pluralistic, interdependent, crip ways of knowing/being that can provide alternate ways of being for both disabled and non-disabled people alike, blur the boundaries between disabled/non-disabled, and challenge those normative ways of being
Rachel Garrison: capstone
No full text2023 Spring.Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: My works are focused on my internal dialogue that is brought to fruition through my imaginative processes. Before starting each piece, I choose a specific concept or experience that I want to explore emotionally. While working with my canvas, I allow my imagination to wander, creating characters and narratives throughout. Being in complete control of this process has been reminiscent of the times when I would play with dolls as a child. My canvas serves as a safe space to engage in the playful and straightforward child-like thought process while coming to terms with complex emotions. Creating in such a way has blessed me with the ability to create hand in hand with my inner child and present self. It has given me the fulfillment of exploring emotions, controlling the narrative, and providing fulfillment for myself. My paintings have become a messy reflection of my entire being and the complexity of life and self. It has given me a window to see myself and how I operate. Artmaking has become an interaction with my adult self, my inner child, and my canvas, all tangled into one conversation
Gabrielle Haberman: capstone
No full text2023 Spring.Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: Painting with an idealized viewer in mind has always captivated this idea for me of creating an experience for the audience. With my paintings I want viewers to be able to approach what they're seeing from the perspective of an observer. This perspective allows for having a looking in the mirror type of experience as if the viewer were observing one their own reflections or portraits while experiencing something outside of ourselves. I have noticed, especially with paintings depicting mundane expressions and relatable context, that viewers relate and will actually have similar experiences and can recognize it in the paintings. Whether someone who never remembers what they look like but thinks it's interesting or someone who relates more to body image as expression, the goal of the viewer is to create an artist or art-interested community that occurs when viewers start to question their own face/portrait/reflection and want to get curious about it. I want the paintings to bring together a community where it is safe and understanding to do so. As an artist this is important to me because having a sense of a community has helped me in many ways in personal life and with understanding deeper parts of myself and my place in the world. The paintings reflect that by portraying my experiences and using color to illuminate a sense of light and bioluminescence to make it more vivid, which portrays how I visualize the references in my mind. I take inspiration directly from my dream journal and then sketch the visualizations from certain dreams or my personal photo references. Then usually I paint on a larger scale because it is more comfortable for me and gives me the space to capture everything I want in a painting. After building the canvas size I collect different references to help me paint different scenes from my dreams or photo references and then slowly build up layers of color that show through each layer, eventually, building up the whole painting together and then adding last marks to help the viewer's eyes gaze around the canvas evenly
New evidence for age differences, within-person declines and plasticity in the aging white matter: new MRI techniques and analytical approaches
No full textIncludes bibliographical references.2023 Spring.White matter deterioration leads to cognitive impairments in healthy aging, Alzheimer's disease, and related dementias. Therefore, it is critical to identify interventions that can slow the white matter deterioration. Animal studies have suggested that the white matter plays an active role in brain plasticity and learning. However, evidence for experience-induced plasticity in adult human white matter remains scarce and inconsistent, especially in older age. To accurately predict the effects of interventions on the white matter, we first need to understand the direction and magnitude of naturally occurring within-person changes across adulthood. To date, white matter in aging, Alzheimer's disease, and related dementias have been studied almost solely using diffusion MRI, which provides limited information about the white matter microstructure. Because there is little evidence of white matter plasticity in adult humans, white matter has rarely been considered as a target for interventions against dementia. This dissertation comprises three scientific articles investigating the mechanisms of white matter decline and plasticity. The first article presents a study using a novel technique (T1w/T2w imaging) to examine the effects of aerobic exercise on aging white matter in a randomized controlled trial. The second article is a meta-analysis and systematic review of within-person changes in white matter. The third article shows the first application of a multimodal fusion analysis to study healthy aging white matter. Through these innovative approaches, this dissertation provides new insights into the mechanisms of white matter decline and plasticity, paving the way for the development of effective interventions to promote healthy brain aging
Machine-learned gas optics with a focus on geostationary extended observations (GeoXO) for improving water vapor observations in the lower atmosphere
Full text link2023 Spring.Includes bibliographical references.In the grand scheme of the earth-atmosphere system, there are few constituents more vital and mysterious than water vapor. Vital because of its interwoven thermodynamic, radiative, and dynamic influence on the weather and climate of the planet, and mysterious because of our limited capacity in observing its time evolution in horizontal and vertical space. The advancements in the spectral and radiometric accuracy of next-generation infrared sounders are expected to bring unprecedented value to our observational capability with improved profiling of lower tropospheric water vapor where it is most abundant. Essential to performing satellite observations and their assimilation to dynamical models is the accurate and efficient radiative transfer calculations. In this process, calculating the atmospheric absorption by various gases is one of the most important steps. The 'line-by-line' approach of computing the influence of every absorption and emission line is operationally impractical for many observations that can contain hundreds of absorption lines. The existing radiative transfer models, therefore, use parameterized gaseous absorption using methods like pre-computed lookup tables or regression methods. The conventional methods compute channel values and can only be used for a specific sensor and channel. Here, we present a new method of performing gas absorption calculations using machine learning that can be applied to the spectral interval of any channel. With an example spectral interval of the new water vapor channel on the upcoming GeoXO infrared sounder, we train neural networks to emulate the line-by-line layer optical depths on a consistent grid of 100 atmospheric layers defined by 101 pressure levels spanning from 1100 hPa to 0.005 hPa. We sample a diverse set of 8640 profiles around the globe for the year 2014 from the Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) atmospheric reanalyses dataset (ERA5) and use 80% of these profiles as training data and 20% of the profiles as validation data. We test the performance of the emulators using a completely independent set of 83 profiles from ECMWF for the year 2006-2007, known as ECMWF83 profiles that have been widely used for training the atmospheric transmittance due to gas absorptions. The atmospheric optical depth used as the truth in all datasets is calculated from the line-by-line Monochromatic Radiative Transfer Model (MonoRTM). The evaluation results from the testing dataset show that the trained neural networks are able to predict line-by-line layer optical depths with a mean percent error of 0.47%. Radiative transfer models used for simulating satellite radiances, like Community Radiative Transfer Model (CRTM), require channel layer-to-space transmittance profiles for solving the radiative transfer equation. Transmittance profiles were calculated using the predicted line-by-line layer optical depths with a mean percent error of 0.02%. Further, the predicted values are also able to accurately calculate the channel weighting functions with the mean percent error of 0.13%. The results show the feasibility of utilizing neural networks in predicting line-by-line optical depths that can be applied for any spectral interval and can be highly useful for the designing of future sensors
Molly Haynes: capstone
No full text2023 Spring.Colorado State University Art and Art History Department capstone project.Capstone contains the artist's statement, a list of works, and images of works.The artist's statement: Clay is material that holds memory; memory of its shape, the artists' mark, the collective moment in time, of where it has been, how it has traveled and its purpose. It holds the memories of ancestral stories, how people have thrived or survived. In its fired state, clay holds the memory of the practice and the process. It tells so many different stories, nourishing the body, representing the body, containing the body. "Her Spirit" is about memory, each feather a representation of motherly spirit, essence and the memories we hold. The shadows they make are not unlike a memory; intangible and existing only because the form exists somewhere in time. They are a reminder of loss and grief but also grace and beauty. Attached to the physical body of the vessel, the feathers become weighted and grounded. They become personal, bodily, and intimate. The forms represent an opposition between spirit and physical. The spirit of the feather, a collection of personal memories, lives simultaneously in the ether and the body, where one is formless and eternal and the other is bound by change. I am interested in creating forms that can be in dialog with each other and their process. By creating molds that I use to create slip-cast hanging feathers and pressmolded sprigs to attach on vessels, the hanging feathers and vessels are in conversation with representation of spirit. These vessels include abstracts owl-like forms that portray the embodiment of spirit. They are glazed and textured in ways to elicit owl-ness. The feathers are suspended in the air, cascading to the ground yet frozen in time. My intention is to create a moment where each feather is a memory and suspended together become a network of memories. The feathers are intended to be in dialog with the feathers on the pots, because they are not separate from each other, but a part of a larger microcosm of collective memories that we all have with the people we love. They are glazed or unglazed, white stoneware and porcelain, since they are the original pure memory before the memory gets diluted over time. During the process of creating the feathers, many shatter, some break, some never make it through to completion because they are so delicate in their bone-dry state before they are fired. In the right light the feathers create many shadows on the walls. Not unlike a memory, a shadow is elusive and intangible, representative of something that exists but is not the thing itself
Childfree and happy: transforming the rhetoric of women's reproductive choices
No full textIncludes bibliographical references and index.Childfree and Happy examines how millennia of reproductive beliefs have positioned women who choose not to have children as deviant. Considering affect and emotion alongside the lived experiences of women who have chosen not to have children, Wooten offers a new lens to feminist scholars' examinations of reproductive rhetorics.--Provided by publisher.Normalizing childfreedom: affect, reproductive doxa, and childfree rhetorics -- Hegemonic mothering ideologies and gendered happiness scripts -- Reproductive commonplaces and rhetorical roadblocks -- Reproductive arguments and identity work -- The limits of re-articulating hegemonic reproductive beliefs -- New articulations of childfree women's identities -- Conclusion: No regrets? Happiness and reproductive doxa
