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Dialectic of Scarcity: Economy and Finitude in Late Capitalism
No full textThis dissertation examines how human finitude came in the twentieth century to be interpreted as an economic problem. Its aim is to trace, in particular, the dialectical connection between utopian political promises of generalized abundance and the economization of various dimensions of human finitude (temporality, mortality, natality, plurality, interdependence). Chapter 1 revisits the emergence of the economy as a discursive object in the first half of the twentieth century, revealing it as a site not merely of measurement and administration but also of political attachments. It does this through an analysis and critique of John Maynard Keynes’s interwar writings and of his plans for a postwar global economic order. The economy, the chapter argues, was constituted through a specifically perverse utopian promise: that of its own disappearance as the result of technological progress and universal abundance. The failure of Keynes’s forecast concerning the end of the economic problem must, in consequence, be simultaneously understood as the failure of a utopian project of reordering and transforming capitalist society. Chapter 2 shifts to the postwar boom and discusses “automation,” a word coined in this period, as a political technology. The project of automation, including that of constructing artificial intelligence, was, the chapter argues, shaped by the fantasy of unfree, perfectly rule-bound and obedient labor. The chapter describes how narratives of the imminent obsolescence of “menial” labor due to automation served as the condition of possibility for political promises of democratic classlessness and general prosperity. It concludes by suggesting that affluent nations’ increasing reliance on non-citizen workers – both through offshoring and the use of migrant labor – has been mediated by earlier promises of the technological obsolescence of the working class. Chapter 3 deals with the difference between the post-industrial economy as a utopian vision of the early postwar decades and as it subsequently came to pass. The chapter investigates a shift in the tenor of economic thinking, beginning in the 1960s, away from promises of abundance and towards various reassertions of the necessity of scarcity – whether in the form of the finiteness of time, of the ecological limits to growth, or of the persistence of human interdependence. What connects these disparate reassertions of scarcity, the chapter shows, is their integration of human finitude into the scope of economics in an attempt to account for the limits of industrial abundance. The chapter insists on the ambiguity of this economization of human finitude, which serves both to chasten human ambitions and to push in posthuman directions
GOING THE DISTANCE Supercommuters and American car culture in tension with metropolitan identity in Rockford, IL
Get PDFSupercommuters, or people whose commute times fall at the extreme upper end of typical commutes, account for an outsized portion of gasoline consumption and car dependence. Thus, accounting for supercommuters is crucial in addressing environmentally untenable transportation practices and deemphasizing car travel when reframing future urban development and identity. There is no scholarly consensus on the commute time or distance that defines a supercommute, so I rely here on interlocutors’ self-definition as supercommuters between the Rockford, IL metropolitan area and greater Chicago (within Cook County). Existing research on commuting tends to focus either on the social experience of automobility, or on the historical and contemporary car-centric forces that shape the built environment; addressing why and how people participate in the extreme supercommute within the particular geographic context of the Rockford-Chicago commute reveals the values and suburban cultural logics that undergird this practice. This, in turn, allows the practice to be understood through simultaneous environmental and anthropological lenses. By undertaking an analysis of the experience and motivations of supercommuters between Rockford and Chicago in relation to Rockford’s ongoing reflexive economic and urban development planning and practices, I address both the collective priorities that enable the daily physical grounding of supercommuting and the incongruities between these practices and Rockford’s contemporary process of identity (re)formation. I argue that the suburban, automobile-reliant ideals that undergird supercommuters’ logics run counter to the foundational principles of sustainable urban communities. Thus, development professionals’ work in reorienting Rockford’s identity towards a cohesive, locally-centered cosmopolitan and metropolitan area is situated in, and must contend with, the friction between this new paradigm and the suburban ideals which make supercommuting not only viable but voluntary
Investigating and quantifying selection bias in research using placental pathology samples
Get PDFIntroduction: Increasing research interest has focused on placental pathology and pregnancy outcomes. Placental pathology examinations that are requested by the delivering provider are often used for research due to convenience, potentially introducing selection bias. We leveraged a large cohort of prospectively collected and examined placentas to compare prevalences of placental pathology and to quantify potential selection bias. Methods: All placentas were prospectively collected from participants and pathology examinations were completed in the Stress, Pregnancy, and Health (SPAH) study, regardless of delivering provider request. In all cases, placental pathology was categorized and graded into four major groups: acute inflammation (AI), chronic inflammation (CI), fetal vascular malperfusion (FVM), and maternal vascular malperfusion (MVM). We compared the distribution of placental pathology in cases with and without pathology examination requests. Odds ratios (OR) for preterm birth (PTB) and small for gestational age (SGA) infants were calculated in the whole cohort and compared with the requested subset. Relative odds ratios (ROR) were used to quantify the magnitude of selection bias. Models were adjusted for sociodemographic and pregnancy characteristics. Results: A total of 575 placentas were collected and examined, 287 with delivering provider examination request and 288 without request. The prevalence of AI, CI, and FVM was similar among the two groups. However, the prevalence of MVM was significantly higher in the requested placentas, particularly for high-grade MVM (15% vs. 8%, p Conclusions: MVM was the only placental pathology seen more frequently in the delivering provider requested sample. Our RORs quantify differences in the associations, providing an estimate for the potential impact of selection bias. Research using a convenience sample of requested placentas may modestly overestimate associations, though the overall findings and interpretation of associations remain unchanged.</p
Problems at the Intersection of Geometry and Dynamics: Lyapunov Exponents, Rigidity and Entropy of Geodesic Flows
Get PDFThis thesis comprises three results relating the geometry of a closed Riemannian manifold of negative sectional curvature to the dynamics of the associated geodesic flow. The first result proves that generically in the space of 1/4-pinched negatively curved metrics on a closed manifold the Lyapunov exponents of the geodesic flow all have multiplicity 1, a property known as simple Lyapunov spectrum, with respect to all measures with local product structure. The second is a rigidity theorem which provides a dynamical counterpart to a theorem of Eberlein showing that the universal cover of a closed manifold of negative sectional curvatures admits a discrete group of isometries, unless the manifold is locally symmetric. In this setting, we define a transformation group of the unit tangent bundle of the universal cover which preserves the Anosov structure of the geodesic flow, and show, under a 1/4-pinching assumption of sectional curvatures, that it must be discrete unless the underlying manifold is locally symmetric. Lastly, the third result, which is joint work with K. Butt, A. Erchenko and T. Humbert, shows that for a closed surface of variable negative Gaussian curvature the Liouville entropy of the geodesic flow is strictly increasing along the normalized Ricci flow
How Large-Scale Legal Aid Impacts Civil Proceedings: Evidence from Immigration Courts
Get PDFRecent court reform efforts across various types of civil proceedings have focused on providing access-to-counsel to allow financially constrained litigants to vindicate their legal rights. But how effective are these programs at delivering increased and improved representation to their target populations? To answer this question, I examine the impact of the New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), the nation’s first large-scale deportation defense program, on legal outcomes for immigrants facing removal. Using a dataset of over two million removal proceedings, I employ a difference-in-differences and event study design to compare three groups: (1) immigrants in custody in New York City (the treated group), (2) those in custody elsewhere, and (3) those never in custody in New York City. My findings indicate that NYIFUP successfully increased legal representation for detained immigrants in New York City, raising representation rates by 4.6 percentage points. The program also improved legal outcomes, reducing removal orders by 6.4 percentage points, equivalent to about 500 avoided deportations. Notably, most of the decline in removals resulted from procedural case terminations rather than relief grants or voluntary departures, suggesting that the program primarily screened out legally insufficient cases while maintaining outcomes for those seeking relief. I also find considerable distributional and demographic heterogeneity among the respondents who realize these gains. This heterogeneity demonstrates that the policy predominantly operates on the extensive margin of representation; that is, providing representation to those who would have otherwise not had it. This heterogeneity illuminates the mechanisms of NYIFUP, highlighting both the advantages and limitations of “court docket-based” public options in civil proceedings
Genetic Modulation of a Human Kinase Using Engineered Intracellular Antibody Fragments
Get PDFMechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a serine/threonine protein kinase that regulates eukaryotic cell growth and metabolism in response to nutrient and growth factor cues. Dysregulated mTOR signaling is implicated in the progression of a wide range of human diseases, including cancer, neurodegeneration, metabolic disorders, and age-related conditions. Despite significant therapeutic potential, efforts to safely and effectively modulate aberrant mTOR activity with small molecules remain hindered by an incomplete understanding of how its substrate recruitment modalities, conformational dynamics, and subcellular spatial functions are coupled to distinct physiological outputs. To address these limitations, this thesis describes an approach for modular genetic control of mTOR-mediated signal transduction. Herein, a series of synthetic antibody fragments targeting multiple epitopes and conformations of an mTOR substrate recruitment domain were generated using phage display. When genetically encoded as intracellular single-chain variable fragment “intrabodies” in living cells, these binders enabled programmable modulation of mTOR activity with conformational, spatial, and epitope-based precision. A combination of high-resolution crystallographic studies and cell-based functional assays provided key insights into FRB-mediated substrate docking, an allosteric mechanism governing mTOR complex 1 stability, the subcellular regulation of nuclear and cytoplasmic mTOR signaling, and an inhibitory binding site for unconventional modulation of mTOR function. In summary, this work integrates protein engineering, molecular structure, and synthetic biology approaches to establish engineered intracellular antibody fragments as essential tools for investigating the structural and spatial mechanisms driving therapeutically relevant protein kinase activity.</p
Ion Exchange in Layered Oxides – Understanding and Applications
No full textIon exchange is a longstanding and naturally occurring phenomenon in which ions are exchanged between a solid material A and a media B while preserving charge balance. This process is vital for modern technology and daily life, playing a crucial role in water purification, pharmaceuticals, and energy storage. It serves as a key mechanism in material synthesis, enabling precise control over compositions and properties. Additionally, ion exchange is widely employed in element separations, such as rare-earth purification and alkali-metal recovery, due to its high selectivity and efficiency. Its versatile applications underscore its significance in advancing scientific and industrial progress. This dissertation focuses on the intrinsic ion exchange behavior in layered oxides and provides the insights into the ion exchange phenomenon from fundamental understanding and show the versatile possibilities by utilizing ion exchange in materials synthesis and element separation field. In Chapter 2, we studied the Li/Na exchange in layered oxides materials by using model CoO2 materials. We show that the Li/Na exchange process is governed by two-phase equilibrium due to the intrinsic different structural preference to Li and Na ions of layered oxides. In Chapter 3, we continue the study of Li/Na exchange in layered oxides and show the two-phase equilibrium governed exchange pathway is a very general exchange pathway among different transition metal layered oxides. We also demonstrated that the ion migration pathway controlled by the structural preference is the determination factor on phase separation or “intermediate phase” behaviors. In Chapter 4, we study the potential of rare earth element separation by utilizing ion exchange behavior in hydrated layered V2O5. We show the hydrated layered V2O5 can host rare earth ions with their intact first hydration shell, and at the same time provide the large enough distinguishing capability towards different rare earth ions. In Chapter 5, we provide a short perspective to indicating the possible future research direction in terms of ion exchange in the applications of materials synthesis and element separation.</p
Behavioral Changes in Business School Professors: Why Do Some Professors Experience a Decline in Research Productivity After Obtaining Tenure?
Get PDFSome people believe that paying high salaries to employees with tenure is unfair because it limits the institution's ability to hire younger, potentially cheaper, and more talented individuals. If tenure maximizes the potential of existing employees, this tradeoff seems reasonable. However, based on expectancy theory and behavior reinforcement theory, as well as previous studies, research productivity tends to decline in both quantity and quality after obtaining tenure. I have taken note of this issue and will focus our investigation on the factors leading to changes in the quantity and quality of productivity. Understanding whether tenure candidates can maintain their performance levels after obtaining tenure is just as important as evaluating their impressive resumes. After all, no one wants an ineffective employee to become untouchable due to the protective mechanism of tenure
Too Cool for Studying: The Intersection of Gender and Race in Australian Single-Gender Private Schoolboys’ Studying Habits
Get PDFThis paper examines how racialized perceptions of masculinity are formed in the context of the study habits of schoolboys in Australian all-male private high schools. Australia’s elite private schools have a unique racial makeup. Due to the country being a popular immigration destination for middle and upper-class Asian migrants, there often exists a significant plurality of Asian students alongside the White student majority. In a boys-only context, this unique demographic makeup leads to racialized perceptions of acceptable masculine behavior, which then affect the studying habits of White and Asian schoolboys. Existing literature has explored the implications of racial divisions within school environments, but few have conducted intersectional analyses of how gendered framing becomes simultaneously racialized in single-gender environments, particularly in a dichotomous White-Asian context. Drawing on 15 interviews with students who were recently enrolled at one prestigious private boys’ school in Melbourne, this paper seeks to provide much-needed expansion on the socialization of boys within boys’ private school settings and how these spaces formulate racialized versions of traditional gender ideology. In doing so, it aims to shed light on how adolescent Asian masculinities are shaped in the West by challenging popular ideas of model minority subject formation
Should I stay or should I flow? An exploration of phase-separated metallosupramolecular liquid crystal polymers
Get PDFDynamic liquid crystalline polymers (dLCPs) incorporate both liquid crystalline mesogens and dynamic bonds into a single polymeric material. These dual functionalities impart order-dependent thermo-responsive mechano-optical properties and enhanced reprocessability/programmability enabling their use as soft actuators, adaptive adhesives, and damping materials. While many previous works studying dynamic LCPs utilize dynamic covalent bonds, metallosupramolecular bonds provide a modular platform where a series of materials can be accessed from a single polymeric feedstock through the variation of the metal ion used. A series of dLCPs were prepared by the addition of metal salts to a telechelic 2,6-bisbenzimidazolylpyridine (Bip) ligand endcapped LCP to form metallosupramolecular liquid crystal polymers (MSLCPs). The resulting MSLCPs were found to phase separate into hard and soft phases which aids in their mechanical robustness. Variations of the metal salts used to access these materials allowed for control of the thermomechanical, viscoelastic, and adhesive properties with relaxations that can be tailored independently of the mesogenic transition. This work demonstrates that by accessing phase separation through the incorporation of metallosupramolecular moieties, highly processable yet robust MSLCP materials can be realized. This class of materials opens the door to LCPs with bulk flow behavior that can also be utilized as multi-level adhesives